I hope you enjoy this, the second of three installments.
Julie Wilson, Xianhom@aol.com.
A second letter from the same writer appeared in February 1994:
Dear Julie,
As you know, I promised my wife I would accept your advice regarding her proposal that I wear women's panties to insure that I remain faithful to her.
My wife was overjoyed by your response. You supported her and advised me to wear the panties she picked out for me and to tell her that I would never be unfaithful and that I would prove it by promising to wear whatever underclothes she wanted. As you probably expected, your advice did not exactly make my day.
Being true to my word, however, I did everything you advised, word for word. At her request, I even put my promise in writing to make her feel more secure.
We also read and discussed your August 1993 editorial about clothing and contempt as you suggested. Although we both understand your message, I have to admit that it doesn't make wearing women's underpants any easier for me. I have a feeling of shame and vulnerability that I don't know how to explain.
My wife on the other hand is delighted. She says that if she knew how "cute" I looked in panties, she would have had me in them years ago.
She is acting differently too. Instead of being grateful to me for following your advice, she seems intent on maximizing my embarrassment. She expects me to wear panties that are more frilly and feminine than anything she wears herself. When I complained, she said, "The more girlish they are, the more careful you'll be about showing them off to other women." I think plain white cotton should be good enough. She has also started calling me "Fancy Pants" and telling me she can see my "panty line" through my trousers.
She also claims that when I promised to "wear whatever underclothes she wants," as you advised, I promised to wear more than panties if she wants me to. I don't know what she has in mind, but fortunately I think I have her rightfully convinced that since your whole answer focused on "underpants," it was just an error when you printed "underclothes" in your very last sentence. I didn't even think about it until she brought it up.
Finally, she says that she has continued to review your editorial and has concluded that it would actually be a positive thing if our children knew I was now in panties at her direction. She believes this would strengthen the confidence and self-esteem of our daughters while setting a good example for our son. What about my self-esteem? I think I should try to set a good masculine example in our home.
Why do you think my wife is acting this way? This whole thing started with concern for her peace of mind and now she seems to have no regard for mine. I don't think she recognizes what a difficult thing I am doing on her behalf. Wearing panties makes me feel like a total wuss. I hate wearing them.
My wife says my attitude is very chauvinistic and definitely reflects a conscious or unconscious contempt for women that she never dreamed I had. If that's true, what can we do to overcome it? I don't want to be a chauvinist, but how do you deal with something that has its roots in childhood? Recognizing or admitting something isn't the same as knowing how to cure it. (This time it's my wife who agrees to follow your suggestions.) She thanks you and says you can sign me fancy pants.Dear Mr. Fancy Pants: Things seem to be developing quite rapidly in your household. When you first wrote, your wife had one goal: to help you resist the temptation to be unfaithful. Now there are two more goals: [2] to help you overcome the residual contempt for women that you picked up in childhood and [3] to help your children develop respect for women. Let's take these one at a time.
Regarding your wife's desire to provide you with a deterrent against infidelity, I think that she is perfectly right that frilly, girlish underthings work better than plain white cotton. In fact, had I known that you were talking only about white cotton panties, I would have said something about this myself. It is much better for you to be wearing lace-trimmed nylon panties in pretty colors, and I am glad that your wife has taken the initiative in this matter. Of all the couples I have known who have done what you are now doing, I have never heard of the husband wearing only white cotton panties.
You also ask if my mentioning "underclothes" instead of "underpants" in the last sentence was just carelessness. It was not. I talked about underpants for most of my reply because that is what you wrote to ask about. But then I mentioned underclothes in the last sentence because I did not want to foreclose other things that your wife might want to do. So her initial intuition about what I meant was correct.
I don't know what she has in mind for you either. The women that I have known who dressed their husbands in feminine underthings most often added either a girdle or a garter belt and sheer nylon stockings. And other garments, and combinations of garments, are possible. These additional undergarments increase the incentive to stick to the straight and narrow, not least because of the time it requires to take them off and put them back on.
Now about your wife's second goal, that of overcoming your childhood prejudices about the female sex. You are perfectly right that recognizing a problem is not the same as solving it, but it is the indispensable first step. Now that you have taken that step, the thing to do is find a way to rid yourself of such prejudices.
I can tell you the answer to this one. Psychologists say that there is one technique that is far and away the most effective for dealing with prejudices, particularly deep-seated ones. That technique is called role-playing. It is a more informal version of psychodrama, a technique of psychotherapy developed in the 1920s by J. L. Moreno. As its historical roots in psychotherapy indicate, role-playing is a powerful tool in bringing about attitude change.
Role-playing is used to help Christians understand Christian anti-Semitism and to help white people understand white racism. It works a bit like acting in a play. A Christian pretends that she is a Jew and is put in a situation where she is confronted with anti-Semitism. Then she has to figure out how to respond to it. As she works this through, she becomes able to deal with her own prejudices about Jews.
Similarly, a white man would pretend he was black. As he was confronted with instances of racism, he would come to a new understanding of his own unacknowledged racial prejudices.
The technique of role-playing is the answer to your problem. You can overcome the contempt for women that has its roots in childhood by experiencing the female role first-hand.
You do not have to become a woman in order to do this. The Christian who pretends to be a Jew does not actually become a Jew, nor does the white man who pretends to be black actually turn black. The way that role-playing works is that you pretend to be a woman, and your prejudices against women will be inexorably undermined.
You have already started to experience the female role to a limited extent. By wearing the pretty panties that your wife has chosen for you, you have the opportunity to reflect on the nature of femininity. This opportunity is enlarged by your wife's calling you "Fancy Pants," which has the effect of reminding you of what you are wearing and getting you to think about it. Teasing you by saying that she can see your panty line under your pants also works toward this end.
I don't believe that your panty line really shows. I think your wife is just teasing you because you are so sensitive about wearing dainty panties. This will pass. The only reason that anyone teases another person about anything is because that person is touchy about it in the first place. Once you get over your sensitivity about wearing panties, the teasing will stop.
I can assure you that this will happen. I have known a number of women who put their husbands in women's panties, and the husbands always came to accept it. The time will come when it no longer embarrasses you to slip into your girlish underpants in the morning. The only reason for your present discomfort is the prejudice against women that you picked up in childhood, and that can be overcome. I know that you have this prejudice from what you say in your letter. You write: "Wearing panties makes me feel like a total wuss."
The word "wuss" is the conflation of the words "woman" and "pussy." Calling a man a wuss is saying that he resembles a woman. This is a put-down only for someone who believes, consciously or unconsciously, that women are inferior to men. That is why there is no female equivalent for "wuss," since its use presupposes a belief in female inferiority. There is an episode of the sitcom Roseanne in which her husband Dan calls Roseanne a wuss. The audience laughs because being a wuss means being like a woman. This can be a bad thing only if you believe that there is something wrong with being a woman. So the fact that you use the word "wuss" in your letter tells me that you have yet to overcome the contempt for females that you acquired as a child.
Psychologists tell us that every personality has both its masculine and feminine side, but you speak of wanting to set a masculine example in your home as if masculinity necessarily excluded anything feminine. This is not the case; masculine and feminine personality traits can coexist in the same individual and usually do. I wrote about this in the October 1992 issue of Christian Home in a review of Dr. June Stephenson's book Men Are Not Cost-Effective. Dr. Stephenson's chief concern was with male crime, but she also goes into androgyny and the importance of not encouraging boys to be too masculine. I think you would find it helpful to to read my review article. If you have difficulty locating it, just let me know and I will send you a reprint of it.
The contempt for females can be overcome. It is not innate; it is just an old habit. A bad habit like smoking. This is why your wife acts as if she doesn't appreciate how hard it is for you to wear women's panties. Right now you are in the position of the person trying to give up smoking who has managed to cut down to one pack a day. He doesn't understand why his friends don't seem to appreciate what he has gone through. Actually, they do appreciate it, but they see victory in sight, and so instead of congratulating him on cutting down to one pack, they urge him to stop smoking completely. Your wife probably knows very well how difficult it is for you to don your pretty panties; it's just that she wants you to keep going just as the person who is quitting smoking should keep going.
So how can you keep going until you have eradicated your childhood contempt for women? This brings us back to role-playing. Role-playing has been defined as "a method of instruction or psychotherapy aimed at changing attitudes and behavior, in which participants act out designated roles relevant to real-life situations." Similarly, to role-play means "to assume the attitudes, actions, and discourse of another, especially in a make-believe situation in an effort to understand a differing point of view or social interaction." The solution to your problem is to experience the female role so that you can gain insight into the female viewpoint. As you do this, you will leave your prejudices about women behind.
Your wife is in a better position to work out what would be a good role-playing scenario for you than I am because she knows you and I don't. All I can do is outline what some other couples have done in your situation.First of all, wearing women's underthings is not enough. If you are to play the role of a woman, you will have to dress the part. Children as young as 23 months can distinguish between the sexes, but at that early age, they identify gender with type of clothing. It is only around the age of five or so that children come to understand that being a boy or a girl is independent of what clothing is being worn. But there is still that original, primitive beliefÑthat wearing girls' clothes meant that a person was a girlÑburied in the unconscious in some obscure storeroom of discarded mental furniture. As a result, the man who dresses in women's clothes will feel to a certain extent that he really is a woman, even though he knows quite well that he is still a man. This feeling of being a woman is thus of great help in doing role-playing.
One basic role-playing scenario would be for you to wear a dress and women's shoes (along with all the appropriate underpinnings) and do housework. Your wife could give you a feminine name for you to answer to during the role-playing sessions.
In addition, you could do some appropriate reading while dressed in your role-playing outfit. One possibility would be for you to do a little reading in women's magazines every day. Another possibility would be to read some romantic novels. Women read these books, but men do not, and you could try to figure out why this is so. If you can, then you will have learned a lot about differences between the sexes. Reading these novels will not be easy at first, as they tend to be quite complex, but you will find that they get easier with practice. You might want to start with a romantic novel written for teenage girls, as they tend to be simpler. Whatever you do for your role-playing exercises, it helps to keep a diary in which you write down what you did each day. Your wife will probably want to review what you write to see if there is anything that should be added to your account.
These are some of the things that other couples in your situation have done. Your wife will probably have some ideas of her own as well.
Finally, you say that your wife wants to tell the children now rather than later that she has you wearing women's panties. I believe that you have already answered your own question about this, Mr. Fancy Pants. You write about how hard it is to overcome long-standing attitudes that go back to childhood. You are right about this, and you have an opportunity to help your children avoid the prejudices about women that you seem to have acquired as a child. You can be a good parent and help your children grow up with real respect for women.This is the review article from October 1992:
WHAT TO DO ABOUT CRIMEFor every 20 criminals in our society, 19 are men while only one is a woman. There are some female criminals, but they are few and far between. Crime is overwhelmingly a male activity. This is the theme of an important new book, Men Are Not Cost-Effective, by June Stephenson.
Dr. Stephenson, who has a Ph.D. in psychology, marshals the evidence that shows how criminally destructive men can get. Of course, most men are not criminals, but crime costs some $300 billion per year, while women are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.
Most of Dr. Stephenson's 469-page book is taken up with the basic facts about male crime. She documents the rapid growth of male criminal activity and makes it clear that this growth has itself made the threat of prison a less effective deterrent because prison overcrowding has led to shorter sentences and early releases. Then these early releases lead to more crime, which exacerbates the problem of overcrowding.
Dr. Stephenson devotes her last chapter to a discussion of proposals for reducing male crime. Some of her proposals are for various reforms which have been suggested many times before, but she also has a few new twists based on her analysis of crime as a predominantly male phenomenon. One is a proposal designed to educate men about the male nature of the problem; she calls this "gender equity in taxation."
"Many women pay for male crime with their lives," she writes, "but all women taxpayers pay for male crime with their tax dollars." Her proposal is that there be a substantial income tax deduction for being female; in this way women would not have to foot the tax bill for male crime. Such a policy would certainly be more fair than the present system, and just proposing gender tax equity would serve to educate men about the fundamentally male character of the crime problem. Of course, a lot of men are not going to like it, but bringing up the topic of tax equity for women should help men to come to see that women tend to be more emotionally mature and self-disciplined than they are and that it was time to start doing something about male immaturity.
The best thing to do about male immaturity is for men to accept the moral guidance of women in their lives. But Dr. Stephenson doesn't propose that they do this. This is because she prefers to believe that there are no innate differences between men and women. If that were the case, then the only differences between the sexes would be due to differences in social conditioning.
A lot of feminists believe that there are no innate gender differences. In fact, this view is so widespread that it deserves to be called "the official party line." These feminists have a reason for taking this position: they are afraid that if they admit that there are any innate differences between men and women, then the male supremacists will twist the facts around to try to prove that women should be kept in their traditional subordinate role. So these feminists just ignore the evidence for innate differences between the sexes.
The problem with this tactic is that most people are very much aware that there are such innate differences. So when feminists deny their existence, they end up looking more than a little silly. Well intentioned as it is, the tactic of pretending that all gender differences are merely cultural is not going to work in the long run.
On the other hand, writers like Dr. Stephenson are perfectly right when they say that a lot of the differences in behavior between men and women are due to cultural conditioning. Boys and girls are raised differently; they are given different role models, and this explains much of why men commit so many more crimes than women. So what does she propose to do about it?
Here her basic concept is androgyny. This means that every person has both a masculine side and a feminine side to their personality. Dr. Stephenson's proposal is that we help boys to develop their feminine side: "We're talking here about helping boys value and develop the feminine side of their personalities." Since girls seldom grow up to engage in the destructive behavior that so many boys do, teaching boys to act like girls should cut down on the amount of crime. To the extent that male crime is due to social conditioning and does not derive from innate factors, the best thing we could do for boys would be to help them develop their potential for femininity.
Of course there will be resistance to such a proposal. As long as our society continues to view women as inferior to men, any effort to teach boys to be feminine will be condemned as degrading boys to the level of girls. Such efforts will be criticized as making "sissies" out of the boys. But here Dr. Stephenson asks: "aren't 'sissies' better than murderers?"
The fact is that many parents tolerate a great deal in the way of potentially antisocial character traits in their sons because they believe that girls are inferior to boys and that therefore it is better to run the risk of the boys growing up to be criminals than to give them lessons in femininity. The results of these parents' attitudes are reflected in the shocking crime statistics in Dr. Stephenson's book.
June Stephenson has written an important and timely book. Our prisons are overcrowded, and the cost of law enforcement in this country continues to skyrocket. As the back cover of Dr. Stephenson's book observes, "Men Are Bankrupting Our Country!"Men Are Not Cost-Effective: Male Crime In America by June Stephenson, Ph.D. Diemer, Smith Publishing Company, Inc. 3377 Solano Avenue, Napa, California 94558. $18.00.