Why cross-dressing as a woman can be laughed at?

A tough guy is forced to cross-dress as a woman to undercover. Looking at him wearing a dress, his colleagues burst into laughter... I’m sure you saw such a scene on television more than once. Media has illustrated cross-dressing as a woman as a ‘joke’.

Then, how about when the protagonist is a beautiful woman? She is forced to cross-dress as a man to undercover. Looking at her wearing a dress, her colleagues… would be ‘stunned by her beauty’, right? What is the difference?

In the Netflix Documentary ‘Disclosure’ (which I introduced in this article), they showed a possible answer for the question: “cross-dressing as a woman removes threats which male body contains and sends a signal to the audience that ‘you can laugh at him’“. If you laugh at a man, he might punch you with his muscle or rape you with his penis. ‘Disguising weak female body’ changes that fear into a sense of security, like transforming fish with bones and needles into soft and tender meal by cooking.

However, laughing at cross-dressing as a woman as the action which covers up the threats of male body can enhance the discrimination against transgender people. When talking about the matters about transgender people, people tend to focus on ‘what will happen to female-toilet?’ or ‘what will happen to female-public bath?’ It is because laughing at cross-dressing as a woman teaches them that cross-dressing as a woman is ‘strong men’s way to disguise as weak women’. This is apparent from the fact that there would be scarce questions about male-toilet or male-public bath.

Therefore, we should get rid of the thinking style that cross-dressing as a woman can be laughed at. We can see lots of such thinking style on media, but I believe true humor comes from not the appearance of a person but the talent of the person.