Crossdressing tropes in general

@suedenim: Well, if a character crossdresses for plot reasons and then decides they prefer being the other sex and invokes I Choose to Stay, that would be a legitimate example of both Bosom Buddies and Transsexual. Just because they're separate tropes doesn't mean a character can't be an example of both. Same goes for crossdressing as a hobby, really.

Re "Japanese crossdressing" vs "Western crossdressing", I think the fundamental difference is how the audience is supposed to react to the character: "let's put this guy in a dress because it's cute and all the fans will lust after his gender-bending hotness" vs "let's put this guy in a dress because it's funny and weird and will point out how nutty/creepy he is". Both kinds show up in both cultures, but the former is far, far more common and accepted in Japanese pop culture. Jun◊ from Happiness! is not supposed to do the same thing in the story as Klinger◊ from M*A*S*H, and I think they are different tropes.

^We still shouldn't split by country, because then we might as well make one for Swedish Crossdresser, too. (And at least someone would probably point out that Sweden isn't notable on account of not being Japan.)

Anyway, my suggested organization for crossdressing and related tropes:

Tropes about character's actual gender:

• Ambiguous Gender - the audience (and maybe the other characters) don't know the character's actual gender
• Viewer Gender Confusion - the audience gets the character's gender wrong
• Bifauxnen - a woman who resembles or is mistaken for a (usually attractive) young man; may or may not involve deliberate crossdressing, since women have greater license to wear men's clothes than vice versa
• Dude Looks Like a Lady - a man who is mistaken for a (usually attractive) young woman; does not involve deliberate crossdressing (per trope definition), related to the Bishounen esthetic

Tropes about character's clothing choices:

• Crossdresser and Transvestite - merge as supertrope for the following
• Wholesome Crossdresser - cut, replace with set below
• Villainous Crossdresser - cut, replace with set below
• Cute Crossdresser (suggested) - crossdressing characters (of either sex) presented as attractive and played for fanservice or cuteness (example: Jun from Happiness!) - absorbs much of current Wholesome Crossdresser
• Men In Dresses Are Funny (suggested) - crossdressing men played primarily for humor (example: Klinger from M*A*S*H)
• Creepy Crossdresser (suggested) - crossdressing men (rarely women) played for weirdness, creepiness or squick value or to show that a character is deranged (example: what's-his-face from The Rocky Horror Picture Show) - absorbs much of current Villainous Crossdresser

Tropes about disguises:

• Bosom Buddies - men disguise themselves as women: may need a rename
• Sweet Polly Oliver - women disguise themselves as men
• Recursive Crossdressing - women disguising themselves as men disguising themselves as women, or vice versa

Tropes about other character's responses:

• Dragged into Drag - girls love helping boys dress as girls: may need a rename
• Sweet on Polly Oliver - straight guys finds another guy disturbingly attractive (because he's actually a girl)
• Attractive Bent-Gender - men dressing as or transformed into women become hot women.
• Dropped A Bridget On Him - straight guy falls for cute girl, finds out girl is actually guy in drag, mental turmoil ensues

edited 5th Jun '10 2:00:02 PM by lebrel

That seems like a very good organization scheme.

@ Doktorvon Eurotrash: Not suggesting a split by country, but by intent. See the Cute Crossdresser / Creepy Crossdresser / Men In Dresses Are Funny suggestion above.

edited 5th Jun '10 10:37:01 AM by lebrel

^Sounds pretty perfect to me!

I love lebrel's suggestion honestly.

I can't find much fault with that scheme, though I also agree with the need to rename several of the tropes. There will still be some overlap between the tropes, but that's OK, and I think the clear distinctions in definition (a bunch of the definitions probably do need a rewrite for clarity) should avoid having the same example repeated in every crossdressing trope.

If this isn't on the YKTTW yet it should be.

Not everything needs to be thrown on YKTTW the second it's proposed. We should come to a consensus before we confuse things further.

Xzenu also did a good rethink here, and I think we should try to harmonize the two approaches if possible. (Seems like they're actually pretty close, all things considered.)

I like this version far better than Xzenu's honestly. He doesn't seem to have a very good handle on what the tropes mean and he seems to be getting them horribly confused with other tropes. He seems to be lumping tropes like Bishōnen and Sissy Villain that have nothing to do with crossdressing in with tropes centring around it.

edited 5th Jun '10 7:20:50 PM by shimaspawn

Yeah, I like lebrel's version better.

I wasn't really satisfied with my own draft, and I am happy to ditch it in favor of lebrel's system. :-)

Thus, I'm now trashcanning half of the tropes in my crossdressing revision package.

I'll keep the remaining three tropes of my package on YKTTW for now, just in case any of them grow into something useful. :-)

These three that I keep, as an addition to Lebrel's system, are:

• Wrong Genetic Gender - For intersexualism and transsexualism misleading detectives and other researchers.
• Crossdressing Disguise - a spear counterpart of Sweet Polly Oliver.
• What's Hir Gender Again? - a subtrope Ambiguous Gender, where the gender isn't unknown as much as established as the other gender.

edited 21st Jun '10 5:44:09 AM by Xzenu

Crossdressing Disguise is already a trope named Bossum Buddies. It has a horrible name, but we have it already, but the other two I don't see as bad additions.

edited 21st Jun '10 9:40:45 AM by shimaspawn

I have now reconstructed my package completely.

How's the reworking of the crossdressing tropes coming along?

Good question - it seems like we've arrived at a plan, but how exactly to go about implementing it?

I've been wandering around the examples in the existing tropes to clean up Natter and move examples that don't fit.

I think making Crossdresser the main page would help as would an index of crossdressing tropes with lebrel's list and distinctions on it. That will help confusion a lot.

shimaspawn said "Actually, reading them Transvestite seems to be the more negative aspects of the trope. He's perverted, sexually agressive, and often the villain."

Transvestivillain

(yeah, I know that would be the same as Villainous Crossdresser).

edited 2nd Jul '10 8:29:08 PM by MoCellMan

So I think there's a general consensus that lebrel's system is a good one, right? How do we go about actual implementation?

Why don't we do it a trope at a time? First step merging Transvestite and Crossdresser and making it a supertrope. Crossdresser as the main name. Transvestite as the redirect. Make a sandbox thread Merge Crossdresser And Transvestite so that we can go through and weed out duplicates.

edited 16th Jul '10 12:38:54 PM by shimaspawn

^Supporting this.

I just made a start on this - or, er, actually just figured out how the sandbox worked.

Just merged all the examples together at MergeCrossdresserAndTransvestite.

Description is unchanged from Transvestite for the moment, but that's just a placeholder. The text in Crossdresser is so Japan-centric that there's not much of general value, but some of the Transvestite text might still be useful.

Haven't really tried to de-natter it much, though there's a pretty heavy infestation, particularly in the Anime/Manga section.

edited 4th Nov '10 2:05:04 PM by suedenim

Just a note, the difference between the two is that "transvestite" has sexual connotations and "cross-dresser" might just be a person who dresses like the opposite gender; that is, all transvestites are cross-dressers, but not all cross-dressers are transvestites. Do not oppose a merge, the tropes overlap in a way that the words don't.