[SIZE="2"]If a male dresses as a female, most people assume he is homosexual. It ain’t necessarily so, as has been discussed ad nauseum in this section, yet the impression persists...
Using this twisted logic, could you say, with a certain degree of correctness, that a homosexual male who DOESN’T crossdress is transgendered? Do you have to crossdress, M to F, to declare your status as a transgendered person? You may be homosexual AND crossdress, thereby being associated with TG (I think), but what if you don’t crossdress at all?
Traditionally, effeminacy in males is aligned with homosexuality, but let’s not be stereotypical. When I dress-up, I affect certain femme characteristics to help me in my presentation – I let the “girl” emerge, and she makes me act in a pre-determined manner. However, I’m not attracted to my own birth gender, so I remain hetero, albeit a heterosexual with outwardly effeminate tendencies and a temporary femme appearance. The people who see me, all dressed-up in my best approximation of a female, will jump to the conclusion that I MUST be gay. Meanwhile, a gay male may exhibit a little less in the way of “manly” behavior or looks, outwardly showing himself to be more F than M to others, even though he's only doing what comes naturally. Doesn’t this translate into a definition of TG, at least in the loose manner that the word transgendered is bandied about in these parts?
Obviously, only a percentage of homosexual males may be effeminate, but everyone equates outward effeminacy with homosexuality – this falls on the MtF crossdresser, the practitioner of all things femme, like acid rain, but I’ve learned to live with it. Since TG implies living as the other gender, i.e. the one you weren’t born as, a gay person cannot be considered truly transgendered – he isn’t necessarily GOING from one gender to the other, yet he is somewhat genderfluid in his appearance and mannerisms, subjugated as they may or may not be. However, some people insist that ALL MtF crossdressers are transgendered, period. I would say that a gay male is WAY more transgendered than I will ever be, yet he may never crossdress, while I crossdress all the time. I wouldn’t grow a beard, either, but I digress...
My point is that if you’re going to stretch the term “transgendered” to fit all crossdressers, even though many of us have no intention of going on a lifelong journey from male to female, you may want to think about what’s going on with homosexuals. I mean, “T” and “G” are part of the same community, so certain gay males may have some kind of transgendered thing going on. Based on that, I can’t help but wonder why, when a male “comes out” as gay, nobody ever says, “Does this mean you’re transgendered?” As far as I can tell, that’s a decent question to ask, but transphobia eclipses homophobia all the time, and, in any event, ignorance rules. How did I come up with this weird way of looking at things? Well, I’ll tell ya...
Years ago I saw the movie Ma vie en rose at a (gay) movie house in Cambridge, MA. If you haven’t seen the film, it concerns a boy who thinks he’s a girl, so he crossdresses at every opportunity, much to the consternation of his parents, friends, and nearly everyone he meets. The boy believes he’s a girl, so he dresses as he feels he should, i.e. like a girl would – he takes an obvious interest in other boys, and he’s very comfy in the company of other females. By the end of the film, the mother, who has been at her wits end throughout, begins to realize the truth about her son, and she starts to accept him for what he is. A transgendered person, right? Well, that’s what I thought...
Later, I read some reviews of the movie, and several gay males chimed in, declaring that the movie in question was “a perfect description” of their childhood. How could that be? A boy participates in a transgendered act (crossdressing) to express his homosexuality, even though he has no interest in girls per se? I never even thought about something like that before, but here were several mature gay men (including the screenwriter) looking back on their childhood, trying not to shed a tear as they remembered a time when crossdressing came about innocently and naturally, a means to an end. All this points to the reason why L, G, B, & T exist under one imaginary roof – the same basic thing, under different terminology and different directional urges, is going on, and we are more alike than we are dissimilar...
If MtF crossdressing is presumed to be transgendered behavior, and you are presumed (or pre-judged) to be gay for doing it, or even THINKING of doing it, doesn’t it follow that you could be transgendered (to a certain degree) if you’re homosexual? You’re most likely crossdressing if you’re the former, and not necessarily crossdressing if you’re the latter, but aren’t these two ways of existing connected in some way, or different expressions of the same basic thing? I hope I’ve stated this with relative clarity for you all...
Since I’m on a site with many transgendered people, I thought I would ask the title question – it may boil down to how the different parts of the “community” feel about each other, but I think there must be a place where gay and TG cross paths, physically or mentally, even if you are one of those things and not the other. It’s too bad I’m not gay, because then my crossdressing could be better understood by all. As it is, I’m neither here nor there, and it feels kinda sad...
What do you think? [/SIZE]