For me it's just the inaccuracy of it and the ignorance of the general public. A friend of mine recently posted on his facebook an article that politely explained that drag queens and transsexuals are often not the same thing with the comment "my brain just melted". I had no choice but to jump on that and at the risk of making his brain evaporate completely, informed him how real people go way beyond those two commonly known labels. I think he took my statement to heart but he unfortunately didn't ask me to elaborate.
People were throwing gay slurs at me from time to time before I ever tried on that first fateful pair of stockings and I still have no idea why. Although my mother did teach me to throw their label back at them by asking "why, are you looking for a date?" That shut a few people up at least. I guess kids can just smell minor differences and their instinct is to attack. My outward male persona is not a dishonesty but I am realizing now that I do have some feminine traits. At any rate, the slurs stopped after middle school which is kind of funny considering I started really CDing in high school.
Now that I have all that out of the way, I do think we really need to do some deep thinking on this sort of subject as a community. It seems to me that a lot of hetero male identifying CDers are very quick to shout that they aren't gay and aren't trans as though that will somehow allow them to still be part of mainstream society. "I'm wearing a dress but I'm all man, I swear!" If we must categorize people, I don't want to be misidentified either (as though I have any idea what I'm really supposed to be) but I think our quickness to shed these labels also has the potential to distance us from the only communities that tend not to reject us outright. It seems many CDers don't want to get lumped into the ever expanding LGBTQ umbrella because we think we can at least publicly blend into the culturally acceptable "normal" male category.
The truth is, I look down at the clothes I'm wearing right now, feel the makeup on my face and have no choice but to admit to myself that I don't fit the expected gender binary even if only two people actually know about that at the moment. That established, it's probably better to accept allies where I can find them than to try and strike it off on my own quietly saying "at least I'm not one of those people." Whatever you think you are, we are all dignified human beings and those of us who are marginalized by ignorance should probably stand together.
