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Is it fully correct to refer to Joan of Arc as a crossdresser? Granted she ran around in armor, carrying a sword, but Im not sure if women of the Russian Army, during World War II, were "crossdressing" anymore than Pope Joan was. Pizza Puzzle

The article does not state that Joan of Arc was a cross-dresser. It states that Joan of Arc cross-dressed for reasons unknown (and currently unknowable). There's a BIG difference between those two things!
However, although the article does not say so, Joan of Arc did not just cross-dress for battle, but was ultimately burned because she refused to promise never to wear male clothes again. That points to some problem with gender identity, also an intersexual condition has been assumed by some authors. Again, those theories are unprovable.
And nobody implied that the women of the Russian Army were cross-dressing; as far as I can tell from the pictures they had a female uniform.
Pope Joan om the other hand is an apocryphical figure, nobody knows whether such a person ever existed, much less why she was playing a man's role. If she existed, however, she was cross-dressing; again, though, not necessarily a cross-dresser.
-- AlexR 16:39 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The text says: However, most male-bodied cross-dressers prefer female partners. So do most female-bodied.

So everybody who cross-dresses wants a female partner? If true, that implies that female cross-dressers are homosexuals, by and large, and that male cross-dressers are heterosexuals, for the most part. Interesting. In fact, so interesting that it practically demands evidence and explication. It says that the sex of a person has a truly profound influence, in the subset of humans who cross-dress, on whether one is homo- or hetero-sexual.

But.... I suspect that it's just a carelessly constructed sentence. Without knowing the basis for the 2 sentences I wouldn't dare to change them.

Patrick0Moran 06:38, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"So do most female-bodied. " is unsubstantiated. I'm going to reword it. Dysprosia 06:40, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Actually, my experience confirms that most female bodies CDs prefer female partners. That however may be so only because there is a role model in the lesbian community for people who want to cross dress, while there is none for straight women (or more general, androphiliac female bodied persons). On the other hand, cross-dressing used to be an established part of the gay community, but that has very much changed, and in many parts it is, at least off-stage, frowned upon. So cross-dressing among gay men has declined, while it never quite took of among straight women. So that is merely a cultural matter, albeit a very influencial one. Whether you call that a profound influence is a matter of definition then ;-) --AlexR 11:20, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Regarding female cross dressers in history. This is a fairly large topic because before womans liberation many male roles were off-limits to females so it was actually very common to see women dressing up as men to gain access. I've searched Wiki and this is the best place I have found on the topic. It has nothing to do with sexuality, or fetish really. For example I posted Dorothy Lawrence and she did it for one reason only: to gain access to the front lines of WWI so she could make money selling her first-hand accounts. Now, one could speculate on her sexuality, but that's not history, that's specultion. In fact, the military in WWI feared a wave of women imposters trying to gain access to the front lines for various reasons. It really has nothing to do with sexual preferance or fetish or anything like that, which the term "crossdresser" seems to imply. Is there another more appropriate article to discuss this? Or do we need to create one? Certainly, there must be a history book on this subject or even entire sub-field (gender studies?) Stbalbach 20:12, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)