User:English.Shminglish/Cross-gender acting

Gender distinction and cross-gender acting
Cross-gender acting, while not specifically making a statement about crossdressing, helped produce negative judgements and statements about those who did crossdress in the Renaissance era. In order to maintain a hierarchy between genders, something that was prominent in the Renaissance era, there needed to be two genders that were distinct from one another, where an obvious gap in the work sphere could be identified and followed as a result of this gender distinction. Cross-gender acting disrupted gender distinction, as it was either viewed as shameful for MTF (male-to-female) acting to occur or it would give the male actor added benefits of wealth and social standing in scenarios where men would dress as females who married well-off men. It also allowed females a momentary hierarchy, putting them on equal footing to men when they played the roles of male characters. In instances where boys acted as women, it was because they were seen as objects of desire, much like women, and they were also in a subordinate position in the hierarchy scale.

Desire, homosexuality, and the malleability of gender for Renaissance MTF and boy actors
In order to correctly portray the essence of a female when acting, male actors needed to get the audience to believe that they were females, and to do this, MTF actors needed the audience to desire them. Once male actors stepped into roles of women, it was feared that they would then begin to act like the typical unreasonable female identity which made it appear as though crossdressing was an undisciplined act. While troubling to some, the idea of crossdressing interlaced in MTF acting proved that gender was malleable when it came to England in the Renaissance Era. Through cross-gender acting, it has been proposed that gender is something that is changeable for anyone who desires to be of another gender at any time. It was also believed that the theater was a safe space for crossdressing to occur because it confined the act to a distinct place.

When boy actors were used to portray female characters, it was feared by those who were religious that the boys would become the women they embodied in the plays, and therefore they would transform into objects of erotic thoughts for male spectators, further turning the spectators into homosexuals. This sense of desire came from a failed attempt to represent gender category when cross-gender acting occurred. The female costume intermixed with the boy actors' bodies created a sense of confusion between knowledge and visibility and it was thought that this confusion forced male spectators to translate women's appearances to the bodies of boys. Many times Shakespeare has been criticized for inciting male spectator desire on boy-to-female characters in his plays such as As You Like It where boys played highly sexualized female characters.