You would think that this would be an easy question to answer. When a male dresses as a female, or a female dress as a male you would normally say that they are cross dressing (excluding people that are doing it as a gag, or for some type of event, ie Rocky Horror Picture show, etc). That's an easy explanation for someone that identifies their gender with the sex that they were born as. Where it becomes less clear is when you talk about the people like myself, the ones that identify as the opposite gender than what they were born (transsexuals). This could be some one like myself that is in the process of coming up with a plan on how to go about correcting the descrepency, all the way through someone that has already completed their plan is in the process. Outside of work I live my life as Paula (I have to play the game at work if I want to keep my job, at least for now). So what I'm wondering is, when is it that I'm really cross dressing. I identify as female, so am i cross dressing when I'm at work and presenting as a male, or am I cross dressing when I'm not at work and presenting as female, the gender that I identify with?
I guess the real question that I've got is, is cross dressing dependent on your sex, or your gender? I know as silly as it sounds I've given this a lot of thought and at least for me I feel it would be when you are dressing opposite the gender that you identify with. So in my case I would be cross dressed when I'm presenting as a male.
Hopefully I didn't make this to confusing. Sort of throws a whole new wrinkle in things when you think of it this way.