Quote Originally Posted by Gramul View Post
That's not enough to satisfy me. "It just upsets people" is too weak of an argument. It ignores the core base on why it happens. And if I don't know why, how can I be expected to accept it?

The only reason I keep posting in this thread is because I want to know why. Why does deviating from that standard cause distress?
I'm going off of the impression that the specific question is "why does seeing a man in women's clothing [or specifically a dress] upset anyone?"

I feel it has to do with human nature and individual experiences.

In front, there are aesthetic senses at work. Some people like what they see in the first post, some people don't. There's nothing inherently right or wrong with liking or not liking it.

And then you introduce the opinions with the like/dislike and throw in politics, and it gets ugly because a lot of people don't take disagreement too well, and a lot of people don't present their disagreement in a good way either. A lot of this ugliness going on comes from a lack of respect for other opinions and people, and some of it's going as far as rejection of them (which is bigotry).
And that's almost all of the distress I recall seeing from this thread--distress over seeing someone disagrees or isn't making the same argument, not so much any upset at the idea that a man would want to wear a dress.

Outside of this thread, there's social conformity and class, personal ethics, and psychology involved. With all of the complex and subtle associations of concepts that individuals form in their brains, there's no way there's a clean answer to why various people would get upset at seeing a man in a dress.

For some, seeing someone break their sense of the norm could be disturbing their sense of everyday security, the way that change attracts attention--we get a little alert/anxious when we see something different or abnormal, because it's unfamiliar and you may not know how to handle it, or what it heralds.
For some, seeing someone not conforming could be going against their sense of ethics. What they know and accept is "right", and going against it is "wrong".

For some, it could be similar to the uncanny valley where there's discomfort from there being a difference in expectation and what is seen. The concept applies a lot in robotics and 3D-animation, where pushing for more realism is usually more appealing and received well, until it reaches a point where there's a dip in acceptance because there's a shift in perception on what you're looking at, and your mind's expectations change.
a robot stuck inside the uncanny valley is no longer being judged by the standards of a robot doing a passable job at pretending to be human, but is instead being judged by the standards of a human doing a terrible job at acting like a normal person.
The parallel here would be that some people are no longer seeing a guy trying to dress like a girl, but are instead seeing a girl that no longer fits what they know girls to look like.
It doesn't matter if you consciously acknowledge that you're looking at a robot or a guy, it's just the brain not liking the mismatched combination of perceptual cues its getting, thereby causing discomfort.

And it is a valley. After that dip, there's general acceptance again, like people can enjoy what they see in the CG movies that have been released these past few years (unlike Tin Toy from decades ago). Likewise, guys that can be completely mistaken for girls (or vice versa) have a lot of appeal.