FEMALE CROSS-DRESSING
WHEN
AND WHY WOMEN STARTED WEARING PANTS IN AMERICA
IN GOD WE TRUST
America is a country uniquely founded on Christian biblical principles. If you ask people here in America, "Is there any outer clothing that is strictly women's clothing?" The majority (even non Christians) would answer that dresses and skirts are definitely and strictly women's clothing. If, on the other hand, you would ask those same people this question, "What is strictly men's outer clothing?" What do you think they would answer? One hundred years ago the answer would have been obvious, but today they would have no answer, because today there is no outer clothing that is considered to be strictly menswear. All hats, jackets, jeans, slacks, suits, coveralls, and most all men's shoe styles are worn with regularity by women. You'll even see women in baseball, basketball, football, police and armed forces uniforms.
GENDER ABOMINATIONS
Does God's word give any direction on the
distinction of men's and women's clothing? Deut.
22:5 says: "A woman shall not wear
man's clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman's clothing. For whoever does
these things is an abomination to the Lord your God ." This
verse gives us the following information:
1.) There is, or should be, a distinction between
men's and women's clothing.
2.) One shouldn't "wear" clothes distinct
to the opposite gender.
3.) It is not just an unwise thing to do, it
is an abomination!
"Abomination" is a very strong word used to describe such things in the Bible as homosexuality, idolatry, unjust weights and measures, false balances, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, a false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers.
It is very important that we understand clearly what God is teaching us in Deut. 22:5 for the following Biblical reasons,
Matthew 5:18-19 “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Romans 7:25 "Thanks be
to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my
mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the
law of sin."
1 Timothy 1:8 "But we know
that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, . . ."
Revelation 21:27 "...and
nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and
lying, shall ever come into it [new Jerusalem], but only those whose names
are [still Rev.3:5] written in the Lamb’s book
of life."
GENDER DISHONOR
We saw in Deut.
22:5 that
the clothing which is good for one gender is an abomination when worn by the
other gender. Gods word also commands gender distinction in the way we wear our
hair, as we see in I Cor. 11:15,16 "Does not even nature itself teach you
that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman has long
hair, it as a glory to her? For her hair is given to
her for a covering." The word "dishonor"
used in this verse is the same word that is used in Rom. 1:24 and 1:26 referring to sexual immorality and homosexuality. A man
with long hair is as disgusting to God as homosexuality. A woman who does not
have long hair, hanging down, covering her ears and neck as a mantle
(covering), is just as "disgraceful," according to God's word. (I Cor. 11:5,6)
GENDER CORRECT
Obviously God has a very strong desire for His
people to have their clothing, hairstyles, and their sexual behavior gender-
correct. Example: A sexual relationship between lesbians or
homosexuals carried the death penalty in the Bible (Lev. 20:13; Rom. 1:26-32). Although most fundamental Christians would have no problem agreeing with being
gender correct sexually, they really struggle with the hair and clothing
issues, which are just as biblical, and their violation just as disgusting to
God, as we have previously read from God's word. Some Christians have never
been exposed to these truths. Others, who struggle with these issues and find
them so hard to comprehend, may be those who have been hardened for so many
years by the world and the teaching of compromised pastors,
churches, and seminaries. One hundred years ago everyone in America
agreed that pants were menswear, even the women who may have been wearing them. That was exactly the reason they were wearing them
because of
the very fact that they were men's wear!
WHO WEARS THE PANTS?
The following sources show clearly that even secular historian see what was happening but do not understand these violations of God's principles of dress and male authority:
Have a Nice Day, A Dictionary of Clichιs, by Christine Ammer (Dutton Press,1992), 402 "wear the pants, to." To be boss. This term was long applied to women, particularly wives, who assumed the domineering household role that was believed to belong to the husband. It dates from a time when only men wore pants or breeches and women wore skirts exclusively, at least in the Western world. Times have changed since the sixteenth century, yet although women's apparel has included both short and long pants for many decades [tens of years], the phrase still means to assume authority that is properly masculine. It reflects, of course, an indelibly sexist attitude.
Dictionary of Slang & Unconventional English, by Eric Partridge (Macmillan, 1984), 1313 "wear the breeches." (Of women) to usurp a husband's authority, be 'boss'. From ca. 1550, though the idea is clearly indicated in 15th century Colloquialism. until ca. 1700.
Slang and its Analogues, by J. S. Farmer and W. E. Henley (Arno Press, 1970), 324 "Breeches" To Wear the Breeches, phr. (common). A phrase said only of women; and signifying to rule; to usurp a husband's prerogative; to be 'master.' An analogous phrase is 'the gray mare is the better horse of the two.' [The derivation is obviously an allusion to breeches as the symbol of authority, i.e., of manhood.] Murray traces the expression back to1553, but it is, in reality, much older. It is found in French as early as 1450.
Female Persuasion Six Strong-minded Women, by Margaret F. Thorp (Archon Books, 1971), p.128 (emphasis added) To printed ridicule she was also happily blind but against the serious opponents of dress reform she went stoutly to battle. The most dangerous attacks she had to meet were theological. The awful divines, accustomed to silencing women with texts from St. Paul, now withdrew to Deuteronomy 22:5:"the woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man." Mrs. Bloomer, who had long since thought her way out of the theological thicket around women's sphere, countered with Genesis. "There are laws of fashion in dress [she wrote in a long review of an anti-Bloomer sermon] older than Moses, and it would be as sensible for the preacher to direct us to them as to him. The first fashion we have any record of was set us by Adam and Eve, and we are not told that there was any difference in the styles worn by them. "And they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons:" then Genesis, III, 7. nothing here to show his apron was bifurcated, and hers not, that hers was long and his short. We are led to suppose that they were just alike." (note: Bloomer fails to explain that God was not pleased with their clothing, Gen. 3:21, nor do we travel backward from the Law to the Garden to discover His plan for governing our lives.)
. . . some of the Lily's subscribers also had moral scruples about wearing the bloomer, but they were of a different color.A group of "old ladies" wrote to inquire whether it would harm the cause if women of fifty or sixty adopted the costume. Mrs. Bloomer's reply was characteristic. "Do just as your impulses move you to do. What you find a burden in belief or apparel, cast off. Woman has always sacrificed her comfort to fashion. You old women of sixty have been slaves to the tyrant long enough, and as you have but a few years to live, be as free and as happy as you can what time remains. Fit yourselves for a higher sphere and cease groveling in the dirt. Let there be no stain of earth upon your soul or apparel."
From the book American Beauty, by Lois W. Banner (A. A. Knopf, 1983), p.94 (emphasis added) we have the following information: Conservative Mrs. L. Abell thought that dresses should not drag in the mud and that skirts should hang from shoulder suspenders to relieve pressure on hips and back. But she was vehemently opposed to the bloomer dress, citing God's command in Deuteronomy that the sexes ought not wear each others clothing: "the Bible is against bloomers."
. . . Indeed, in the years after its appearance, the bloomer dress became popularly identified not only with women's rights advocates, but also with other radicalisms. Particularly noticeable were the free-love advocates who wore variations of it, not only at Oneida, whose members kept to themselves, but also at the small, activist communities around New York City. Free-love, with its overtones of sexual promiscuity, was among the most reviled ideologies in Victorian America, and newspapers like the anti-feminist New York Herald, regularly identified free love with feminism, particularly since free-love advocates often appeared on women's rights platforms to proselytize for their cause. The identification was furthered by the embarrassing disclosure that prostitutes inside New York brothels often wore a costume resembling bloomer dress.
The critics of the bloomer costume were especially outraged by the trousers that were part of it. The dress that covered the upper part of the body was of a standard simple design, shortened to mid-calf. The trousers, however, were a striking departure from customary women's costume. The belief that trousers were meant only for male attire had been strong in Western culture for centuries, and its venerable nature was underscored by the Biblical prohibition in Deuteronomy against women wearing trousers.
. . . By the nineteenth century the doctrine of separate sexual spheres leant additional authority to the canon, strengthened by trousers' symbolic role in establishing masculine identity and dresses establishing female identity. "We believe in the petticoat as an institution older and more sacred than the Magna Carta," declared Harpees Magazine in an 1857 article that decried women's subservient economic position and advocated moderate women's rights goals.
. . . Cady Stanton's father, mortified at her adoption of bloomer dress, wrote that she had made a 'guy' of herself. The New York Herald found the attempt to introduce pantaloons for women so outrageous that it predicted the bloomer women would soon "end their career in the lunatic asylum, or perchance in the state prison."
". . . Pants are allied to power," asserted dress reformer Mary Tillotson. So strong was the identification of trousers with masculinity that not until the early nineteenth century had women worn divided undergarments, in the form of "drawers," as they were called. Long pantaloons as undergarments had a brief vogue in the first decade of the century, but the opposition to them on the grounds of their resemblance to male trousers was so strong that they had disappeared by the 1820's, surviving only as attire among dancers and prostitutes and in the form of the pantalettes that young girls continued to wear as a way of covering legs under short dresses. Thus, pantaloons were highly suspect, and even drawers were not universally accepted. Catherine Beecher, for one, remembered that in her youth in the 1810's and 1820's she had worn nothing but petticoats under her outer garments. One dress reformer speculated that the major problem with the bloomer was that it brought into plain view a garment women had only recently begun to wear as underclothing.
From Ballots to Breadlines, Sarah Jane Deutsch (Oxford University Press, 1994), p.13 (emphasis added). This book shows a photograph of three women, all with short hair, white shirts and ties, and trousers, sitting on an automobile. The caption under the picture reads; "Three women prepared for a trip to California. The independent 'new women' of the 1920's felt free not just to shorten their skirts, but the abandon them. For the first time many women, like men, wore trousers."
The first issue of the newspaper, The Woman Rebel, published by Margaret Sanger in March, 1914, was unapologetic in its radical aims and its frank discussion of birth control. Its aim was, "to build up a conscious fighting character" in its readers. Margaret Sanger, who is best known as the founder of today's "Planned Parenthood" was also an advocate of women wearing men's clothing, which she considered "the right to ignore fashions." She referred to motherhood as slavery, was pro-prostitution, and believed that the woman had the "right to keep her own name." Her ideology was made very clear in the full title of her newspaper:
"The Woman Rebel; No Gods No Masters"
THE ANDROGYNOUS STRAIN
ANDROGYNOUS: Being neither distinguishable masculine or feminine, as in dress, appearance, or behavior; unisex... One secular author sums it up in this manner:
Men and Women Dressing the Part, by Claudia Brush Kidwell and Valerie Steele, (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), p.158 (emphasis added) We began with three basic questions. How does fashion express gender? What does it mean when gender conventions change or are challenged? And does the existence of gendered dress imply the existence of sexual inequality? Much of this book has addressed the first question, examining dress in a variety of settings: cross culturally, in children's clothing, as an erotic stimulus, in the workplace, and in sports. The process of changing gender symbols has dominated the last two chapters. Within each chapter, an answer to the third question has been elusive. But looking over the finished work, we find that not only has truly androgynous dress never existed for adult men and women, but the closest we have ever come to androgyny is for women to dress like men.
Like all sin, the cross dressing problem has
always existed, but it was in the early 1900's in America when women's cross
dressing gained popularity. This was due to the acceptance of the "women's
lib" ideology and the rejection of biblical principles. Women, in their
quest to be "equal" to the man, started wearing their hair like a
man, dressing like a man, working like a man, and doing everything to achieve,
in their mind, this "equality". Today, almost a century later, men's
clothes have been so absorbed into women's fashion, that there is NOT ONE
outer garment that is considered to be distinctly male, NOT EVEN ONE! What we
do have is the obvious fruit of this tolerated rebellion against God's law --
no-fault divorce, abortion, homosexuality, etc. Do you really think
God is pleased with this situation today in the light of Deut. 22:5?
PANTS ARE MENSWEAR
In biblical times men would "gird their loins" for action. This meant either pulling a leather strap attached to the back of their belts (girdle) up between their legs and securing it in the front, or bunching up the material of their tunic or garment and pulling it to the front and tucking it in the belt (girdle). This would split or "breech" the garment into "breeches," and early form of trousers or pants. In time the garments were split and stitched for the men, removing the need of the girdle (belt or strap) and thus the "breeches" of today. A godly woman, of course, would not have exposed her legs and the separation between them in this manner. This practice, accepted by Christianity for 1900 years, is virtually gone. Remember, in our nation, one hundred years ago, everyone agreed that pants were menswear, even the women who may have been wearing them. Shall we thank the feminists for enlightening us?
Having trousers that are cut to fit a woman, or
are of a flowery print or material that is feminine, does not make the garment
women's clothing. If it did, than the same principles would apply to men.
Should a man then be willing to wear dresses made of camouflage print or leather,
etc.? No, that would be an "abomination" to God, just as it is for a
woman to wear pants.
THE SOLUTION
1 Timothy 2:9-12 – “Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.”
The New Testament guidelines for women’s dress in I Tim. 2:9 are:
proper orderly (Biblical), well arranged, decent, modest;
clothing primarily a garment let down; hence, “dress, attire;”
modest shamefacedness, a sense of shame, modesty;
discreet sound judgment, soberness, habitual inner self-government;
and these without question support Deut 22:5. God also directs this specifically to “women,” knowing that it would be women who would initiate the “cross-dressing” problem as part of their rebelling and trying to establish “authority over a man” as predicted in Gen. 3:16,
. . . Yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.
Deut. 22:5 is God's Word. It is supported by I Tim. 2:9 and must be reckoned with. Some arguments to support disobeying this verse are:
1. The verse doesn't apply because we are not under the law. (But it is an "abomination" and many of the abominations of the Old Testament still apply to New Testament Christians who are certainly under some laws).
2. It doesn't apply because we no longer have menswear. All men's wear has been absorbed by women. (Doesn't the verse imply that there should be gender distinction? If it doesn't, then cross-dressing is godly, and it is acceptable for men to wear dresses I Cor. 6:10,11).
3. It doesn't apply because modesty is the important thing. (In this verse God is concerned about gender distinction, which is just as important as modesty.) Again, we refer to I Cor. 6:10,11: "Do not be deceived . . . effeminate . . . shall not inherit the Kingdom of God"
Now, if the "effeminate" (those men that dress or act like women) “shall not inherit the Kingdom,” doesn't it stand to reason that "masculine" women (those that dress or act like men), also “shall not inherit the Kingdom?” Is it sin to be a homosexual, and yet acceptable to be a lesbian?
Isa. 66:2b". . . But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at My Word.”
Growing Christians should be constantly striving to be more obedient to the revealed Word of God, instead of striving to create (what they present as) logical reasons for disobeying Him. Does Jesus command us to be mediocre? Or should we be "perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48)?
It's obvious that God is very concerned about gender
behavior and appearance. Shouldn't the
children of
God also be concerned?
SOME OTHER VERSES TO CONSIDER
Deut. 8:2 "And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether one would keep His commandments or not" Isaiah 3:10-12 “Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, for they will eat the fruit of their actions. Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him, for what he deserves will be done to him. O My people! Their oppressors are children, and women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray and confuse the direction of your paths.” Isaiah 47:1-3 “Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For you shall no longer be called tender and delicate. “Take the millstones and grind meal. Remove your veil, strip off the skirt, uncover the leg, cross the rivers. “Your nakedness will be uncovered, your shame also will be exposed; I will take vengeance and will not spare a man.” I Cor. 10:11 "And these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come."Revelation 21:27 ". . . and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it [new Jerusalem], but only those whose names are [still, Rev.3:5] written in the Lambs book of life."
Below is an American print from 1855 that dramatizes the question, "Who wears the pants?" (Courtesy of the New York Historical Society)
The man on the left says to his friend, "Fight courageous for sovereign authority, neighbor; or your wife'll do to you as mine has done to me--she'll pull your hair off your head and compel you to wear a wig!" The little boy is saying, "Oh, Mamma, please leave my Papa his pants!" The other man states that he would "rather die than let my wife have my pants. A man ought always to be the ruler." The little girl says, "Oh Pa! Let go, be gallant, or you'll tear'em!" The woman pulling on the pants says, "Sam 'y help me! Woman is born to rule and not to obey those contemptible creatures called men!" The woman on the right cheers, "Bravo Sarah! Stick to them, it is only us which ought to rule and to whom the pants fit the best." Above these people is depicted the demon of "discord."
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Below is a picture taken from the book titled Two Hundred Years, a Bicentennial Illustrated History of the United States, published by U.S. News and World Report, in 1973. Carefully read the text as the reporter describes what he sees as "revolutionary" behavior of women in the 1920's. Notice the references to women breaking with the "old rules of conduct," their "moral laxity," and what the "nicest girls" were now doing.
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