In the play, M. Butterfly (Hwang, 1989), the experience of being duped by a man masquerading as a woman is shared by protagonist and audience alike. In a parallel process, both simultaneously know and do not know the realities of the impostor's gender. Cross-dressing, as a variety of imposture, is explained by expanding on Freud's (1927) contribution of the “fantasy of the phallic woman.” A full psychoanalytic understanding of perverse and fetishistic resolutions of early developmental conflicts about the nature of gender requires a consideration of the fear of the vagina along with the wish for a woman with a phallus. This approach to a study of imposture suggests that fantasies shared in common by all people help to account for the success of even gross impostures.