These questions arise from several recent threads. I'm sorry that this post takes a while to get to the point - please stick with me while I try to frame my questions/thoughts.
I also apologize to those who will perceive this as yet another "labels" thread. I think the issues involved are more significant than that, but in any case, you don't have to read it (so please, no answers saying "I don't care what you call me" - I'll concede in advance that this opinion exists). I think that labels can facilitate meaningful dialogue.
Okay, aside from reading books and journals, pretty much all I know about crossdressers is from this forum. In real life, I know trans females (all of whom are full time and on hormones), trans males (all of whom are full time), a wide variety of lesbians (butch, femme, andro), and a few genderqueer people. I also have a lot of online and long-distance trans female friends from other places (all of my close online friends are full time too). So lots of gender-variant people, but I've never actually known a single crossdresser in person, nor do I currently know anyone who is openly questioning their gender. Also, it's been so long since I was personally questioning my gender that perhaps I don't really remember how it felt to be confused or uncertain. So my perspective may be overly narrow.
For simplicities sake (and because it would add more variables to do otherwise, and because trans men don't like other people speaking for them), I'm going to only look at gender-variant people who were originally male-bodied in this thread.
So here is how I tend to perceive things (subject to reinterpretation):
One category is trans females (or trans women). These women were born with male-appearing genitalia and classified "male" at birth. However, they are mentally female, and eventually they realize it - at which point, those that can generally transition to living as a woman, and most try to correct their bodies to be as female as is feasible. Most people in this category are not particularly enamored with their birth genitals. I fit into this category. My gender identity is completely that of a woman, and at this point in my life (thanks in part to various medical interventions) I consider myself completely female, body and soul.
There is a second category - MTF crossdressers who identify as male. They wish (or even need) to engage in feminine gender expression at times for various reasons. Sexual urges, stress relief, gender role coping... I don't know all the possible reasons, and I think that's a broad enough topic to require a separate thread - so for the sake of discussion, let's just all agree that they have reasons other than gender identity. At least some of the people in this category appear to be quite fond of their birth genitals, though they might wish for a more androgynous or even female-seeming physique to facilitate their crossdressing.
Now I personally consider these two groups to be quite distinct. One group suffers from pre-transition gender dysphoria, sometimes to crippling degrees, and identifies strongly as female. Most people I've known in this category reach a point where potential barriers like losing family and suffering employment discrimination are secondary compared to the emotional costs of continuing to pretend to be the wrong gender. The other group identifies as male, tends to be more interested in gender performance than gender identity, and tends to actually like presenting as a male at least some of the time. There are other differences too, but the point is that the differences are pretty fundamental.
Of these two groups, I think that the phrase "crossdressing" is only applicable to the second group. I have a female identity, and at this point I'm legally and anatomically female. From my perspective, to call me a "crossdresser" for wearing women's clothing is to completely disregard who I am and how I identify.
However, there seems to be at least one more category - those "crossdressers" that suffer from gender dysphoria and dress (at least in part) to alleviate it. People who don't fully identify as male or female, or who (perhaps) are uncertain as to their gender identification. On a recent thread, one member of this forum opined that such people are actually the vast majority of crossdressers. I also have a good friend who is one of the SOs here, and I know she wonders if perhaps all (or most) crossdressers are really just transsexual women in denial.
I wonder if either of those statements are true - that the vast majority of CDs suffer from gender dysphoria similar to that felt by trans females, and that most (if not all) of these people are transsexuals in denial. I also wonder if this group is even properly classified as "crossdressers". I've seen some here describe such people as "TS-leaning crossdressers", but I wonder if "TS-leaning" doesn't rank up there with "a little bit pregnant" as one of the great misnomers of all time. As I would define transsexuality, it isn't really something you can "lean" towards. It may be something you are uncertain about, or afraid to embrace about yourself. But it's hard to be partially TS, from my perspective, just as it's hard to be partially pregnant.
I know that some people go through a phase of identifying as a crossdresser before accepting their transsexuality - presumably these people would all fit into the gender-dysphoric category of crossdressers. Some other trans people consider themselves genderqueer or gay before accepting who they really are. These are all just coping strategies (and there are many others).
So I guess my questions would be:
1) How prevalent are gender-dysphoric "crossdressers" compared to male identified ones?
2) How similar are their feelings to those of trans females?
3) How many gender-dysphoric crossdressers feel they have a blended-gender (a mixture of male and female) or some other non-binary gender (genderqueer, third gendered, non-gendered)?
4) How many gender-dysphoric crossdressers feel they are female gendered, but classifiy themselves as "crossdressers" because they don't believe transition is an option (for whatever reason: fear of losing their family, financial concerns, health concerns, fear of not "passing", fear of not being strong enough, fear of being wrong, etc.)?
4b) In other words, are gender-dysphoric crossdressers mostly just trans women who are unwilling or unable to commit to transition, or do they differ from trans females in some other way?
Now, this isn't a poll (because I have multiple questions), and it probably wouldn't give us a meaningful answer if it were. Also, some of these questions may be impossible for some people to answer. Asking "are you a trans woman in denial?" probably isn't too helpful, I'll admit. But still, these are things I wonder about, and I'd love to see more discussion on them.
Anyway, a lot of sweeping statements get made in this forum about "MTFs" and "crossdressers" - sometimes excluding trans females, sometimes not. It seems to me that while it is clear that trans females and male crossdressers are distinct, it's not clear with whom the gender-dysphoric crossdressers belong. Should they be grouped with trans females or crossdressers? Or are they a distinct group (or collection of groups) of their own? Since people can't seem to resist making blanket statements, I think it'd be nice to understand this a bit more.
Also, I think some of these questions are ones that gender-dysphoric crossdressers probably need to understand about themselves (and I know, some of them already do).
FWIW, I've seen discussion elsewhere as to whether young crossdressers even exist - some young people think that the increasing emergence of trans and genderqueer people has made "crossdressing" (in the classic sense) obsolete. I don't think that's true - but I do think a lot of people who have considered themselves crossdressers for decades might have gone a different direction if they were teenagers now.
Thanks to anyone that read the whole post, and apologies to anyone who feels slighted by how I've grouped people.