Tired of the term crossdresser

[mishelle379]

Amen

[deja true]

I find the term a little awkward, too, and hardly ever use it these days. Except when I'm trying to interest someone in this site. But often I'm talking to transitioning women or transmen or even vanilla friends and so have to go on with the explanation that our family here also encompasses trans folks of all flavors gender and sexuality wise, (transmen, transitioning folks, genderqueer, asexual, fetishists, etc., etc. ...).

Because the media has tended to pick up the term and seems to use it interchangeably with the dreaded "transvestite" ("Crossdressing Thief Caught on Security Camera"), it appears to be acquiring the same kinda somewhat derogatory connotations as the t-word.

I'm more than likely to use 'transgendered' these days. The word has a more positive connotation, I'm thinking, as it appears most often in the more serious and sympathetic articles and programs about us, and is readily understood these days by the general public. 'Gender Variant' is becoming a favorite for me, too, but often needs a little explanation.

"Words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the Soul within..." Tennyson

[obsessedwithpantyhose]

when someone askes me where im from i say "my parents"
and when they ask me what am i,i say "im human, what are you" with a smile..
and all my GLBT friends like the fact that i say to hell with labels we are all humans....

[Nicki B]

Well what term would you like others to address you by?

Why not use a wide, cover-all term - like trans, or TG?


Let's concentrate on our similarities, not our differences?

[Miranda09]

I never have been one for labels. Too retrictive and forces people to fit into a certain typecast mold, which is not possible. As I have learned over the 3 months I've been here, this is a very complex community. If a label must be used, then TG is all-encompassing enough to satisfy.

[stormrider]

This reminds me of an incident one day last winter. I was visiting the place I used to work during a busy weekend. One of my former co-workers came over to where I was talking to a group of friends and being a person of very little tact, asked me "Are you a crossdresser?". I misheard him at first and said no not really. When he asked again, I deflected his question with a question of my own and the topic was promptly "forgotten" by the obviously embarrassed group of friends I was with. With the subject changed, the person asking the question, must have realized he was out of line asking something like that in public and we discussed it no more. When I got ome, I started thinking about it and, well yes, I can still be considered a crossdresser. I have long since realized that I am a woman, I just don't have the body to fit me. However, I do crossdress. Every day I work, I get up and put on the suit that the business I work for requires. It is not a coat and tie, but it is a male oriented uniform. In spite of my panties and nylons or my feminine socks, I still dress outwardly in the clothes of the oposite sex.

Michelle

[Ashleigh]

As has been mentioned already, I also don't like labels. Society however seems to require them and uses these labels to isolate groups of people based on certain aspects - be it sex, color, religion, height, weight, sexual orientation, or whatever. This is WRONG. I hate labels and hate the labeling of people.

The term transvestite is not an accurate description of me or others like me. Crossdresser is also not accurate. These terms are used by those who are hateful or naive to take down someone different than they are.

What term should we use? How about human being?

[nancyish]

Dear Jo, you are an evolved person that knows and loves who you are,great looking and loves bluegrass(how cool is that?),are you really human?lol,love Nancy

[Miranda-E]

I'm more than likely to use 'transgendered' these days. The word has a more positive connotation, I'm thinking, as it appears most often in the more serious and sympathetic articles and programs about us, and is readily understood these days by the general public. 'Gender Variant' is becoming a favorite for me, too, but often needs a little explanation.

I generally use transgendered whenever possible. The word crossdresser has taken on a rather homophobic aspect over the past ten years. Originally put into use to avoid a percived stigma of the word transvestite, its taken on one of its own.

[Ralph]

The term transvestite is not an accurate description of me or others like me. Crossdresser is also not accurate. These terms are used by those who are hateful or naive to take down someone different than they are.

Yeah, that would be why this site has such a hateful, derogatory name.

What on earth are you talking about? As noted previously, both "transvestite" and "crossdresser" just mean you're wearing clothes - DRESSING - from the other side - ACROSS - the gender lanes. Why does it bother you to openly state what you do, and why would you consider it insulting?

If the (male) thief was wearing women's clothes, he was crossdressing. It may not be a normal part of his life like it is for us, but that's what he was doing at the time.

"Just because I wear women's clothes doesn't mean I'm a crossdresser" is right up there with "I did not inhale" and "That all depends on what your definition of the word 'is' is".

Why not use a wide, cover-all term - like trans, or TG? Let's concentrate on our similarities, not our differences?

In that case, why not call ourselves "humans" or better still "mammals" and avoid the stigma of favoring one species over another? Transgender is fine and dandy when you're speaking of the wider community in generic terms, but there are also times when a topic more specifically applies to CROSSDRESSERS (see, that wasn't so hard to say!) than it does to, say, transsexuals or non-crossdressing homosexuals or whatever. We're men who like to wear women's clothes (at least, those of us are who aren't pre-op or post-op or just-wish-i-had-the-money-for-it TS)... why not embrace that and quit looking for ways to avoid admitting it?

[Nicki B]

In that case, why not call ourselves "humans" or better still "mammals" and avoid the stigma of favoring one species over another? Transgender is fine and dandy when you're speaking of the wider community in generic terms, but there are also times when a topic more specifically applies to CROSSDRESSERS (see, that wasn't so hard to say!) than it does to, say, transsexuals or non-crossdressing homosexuals or whatever. We're men who like to wear women's clothes (at least, those of us are who aren't pre-op or post-op or just-wish-i-had-the-money-for-it TS)... why not embrace that and quit looking for ways to avoid admitting it?

In that case Ralph, why don't you just call yourself a transvestite? It means exactly the same thing.

'Crossdresser', as a phrase, was coined exactly to avoid admitting it as you say..

It is an american term.

[Ralph]

Fine by me, Nicki. As I have stated elsewhere, one is just Latin for the other. I don't understand where folks got the idea that they mean different things.

That said, I'm more inclined to say "crossdresser" than "transvestite" for the same reason I say "car" rather than "automobile" - the English term means more to people who don't know their Greek and Latin root words.

[Shelly Preston]

Although they both mean the same thing

The media and sex industry have used them in such a way as to distort the word meanings to the general public

IMHO the term crossdresser seems less harsh that transvestite

Its also a lot simple to explain the word to any young person who asks any questions about one of us ( no need for latin explanations )

[gennee]

[SIZE="3"]I feel the same way, JoAnne. A few weeks ago I crossed another threshold and now am a transgenderist. I don't let the label define me but it's how I describe where I am at the present time. I dress in women's clothes much of the time and I feel more like myself.

Gennee[/SIZE]

[Samantha B L]

It all depends on the context and the meaning a person is trying to convey.I like the term "Transvestite" or as they call it in The U.K.,a "Tranny". It sounds grandly feminine in a synthetic wig and nylon thigh highs sort of way. Transvestite also sounds a little bit like a clinical description of someone affected with bizarre perverted impulses and thought processes and sometimes when you tell people that you're a Transvestite it sounds almost like your talling them you carry rare diseases on your hands and arms so stay back! Nevertheless,I was proud to tell people that I was a Transvestite for many years.


I became aware of the term "crossdresser" in 1978 or 1979 and I did some reading on the subject and I found out I wasn't gay or transexual. Since joining this forum I always refer to myself and other forum members including f to m's as "crossdressers". It's much more modern terminology than "transvestite". Terms like "transgender" and "crossdresser"will be,I am sure,the code language of choice in legal paperwork and public statements for things like gender variant equality and other areas.


I was a little skeptical at first about all this. I don't like to sound like Andy Griffith's Lonesome Rhodes Character in the movie "A Face In the Crowd" but I think all these issues about a bunch of TV's and LGBT people don't interest Joe six pack. In fact,Joe probably wishes we'd dry up and go away. But it's interesting to point out that The Joes in many cases have young sons and daughters living in the aftermath of certian subtle social changes that have occured in our society in the sixties and the seventies. Many of them are openly LGBT and TG/TS/CD and the Joes wish it weren't so but don't want their kid's lives to be miserable and want them to be able to survive and have the things everybody else has.



I think there will be enormous strides in Transgender Rights coming up in the next several years and we may even see some changes in things that no one conceived of in 1950 or 1960! But all of us girls and the guys,too will be thought of,in general,as "crossdressers".

[Deidra Cowen]

I used to say I was a Tgirl..well I still might slip and still say that sometimes. But I came to the realization that I am a CD and just go with it. Out at the clubs here in Atlanta there are some nasty mean little FT Transfolk that take great delight in letting girls like me know I'm just a "Crossdresser."

So I turned it around on em and just proudly say out at the bars or wherever when asked that I am a CD. Throws them off! Which is fun.

[Emma England]

Ok, so you bought your own chosen clothes.

Were they from a woman's clothing shop (or from the women's departmant)?

If so, you are crossing the gender line.

I only buy womens clothes now (can't remember when I bought guy stuff at all).

This makes you and me a crossdresser. It is just a fact.

[VeronicaMoonlit]

Out at the clubs here in Atlanta there are some nasty mean little FT Transfolk that take great delight in letting girls like me know I'm just a "Crossdresser."

They're everywhere, even on IRC.

Veronica
Rondelle (Ron) Rogers Jr.

[Ralph]

Out at the clubs here in Atlanta there are some nasty mean little FT Transfolk that take great delight in letting girls like me know I'm just a "Crossdresser."

As soon as I saw that my first thought was "you say that like it's a bad thing". And then you said...

So I turned it around on em and just proudly say out at the bars or wherever when asked that I am a CD. Throws them off! Which is fun.

Yeah! That's the way to do it. Well played, sir.

[Nicki B]

Yeah! That's the way to do it. Well played, sir.

Ralph, you may think of yourself as a 'bloke in a frock', but that's not how I, for one, regard myself..

[dawnmarrie1961]

JoAnn, exactly right. You are who you are supposed to be. What more can anyone ask? Tragic that it takes most of us so long to get to this point. But it was a trip worth taking.

Don't pay any attention to the labels they are just there for shoppers who having quite figured out what they want yet.

[Satrana]

LOL labels are necessary folks, get over it. Yes there is the problem of generalization and simplification which can hurt feelings when you feel the label is applied or understood incorrectly. It is only words.

For those of us who have overcome our internalized transphobia and understand that we are just normal human beings who are ignoring an arbitrary sexist divide in clothing choice, then we do not need to think of ourselves as CDs, but the rest of society does because they still believe in strict gender roles for men.

So until there is a masculine revolution that knocks down the barbed wire fence that surrounds all things feminine, the label will remain in place because it has meaning for cis-people.

And instead of hating the label, you can always embrace it like the "proud to be gay" chant that homosexuals used to come out of the closet. If this community came out in force and showed society what we are and how many of us there are, then any stigmatization attached to the label would quickly dissipate. After all who calls a woman wearing pants a tomboy anymore?

[sterling12]

I've never been wild about The Term "Crossdresser." I'll answer to the label for purposes of identification, but it doesn't make me crazy if I hear it. If I had a preference I would pick "Transgendered," and I also really like The Term, "Transfolk" when we are being all-inclusive.

Someone suggested "gender-variant," but my only problem with that is the term "variant." I think it kind of implies a deviation from The Norm...ergo, to be variant is to somehow be deviant. I don't want people to think that.

The old terms, can be pejorative. "Trannie" and "Drag Queen," (Also really HATE *******) are often used in news articles written by ignorant people who should learn something about us, before they use such negative labels.

For certain, American-English is always evolving. I believe Webster's has hundreds of new words and new definitions of existing words with every edition. I am sure that in the future, our "label" will probably be something different. Hopefully, it won't be something negative.

Peace and Love, Joanie

[tricia_uktv]

Yes I have JoAnne, and I too hate labels. But I knoiw what I am as does everybody else. I'm a t-girl at heart, in the mind and in the open..... and I love it!

[Deb The Brunette]

I do not like the term Crossdresser.
No longer feel like a crossdresser

Dunno, What would you rather be called then? ...Bloke in a frock !!

Have to be honest here, there is a lot worse one can be called than a crossdresser



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