One thing I discovered which sets apart the transgendered "community" from any other community (e.g. gay/lesbian) is how fragmented transgendered are.
There is the guy that put on female clothing while having great sex with his wife and suddenly noticed that he enjoys the feeling of female clothing which turns him on.
Then there is the crossdresser who loves to connect to his feminine side, sometimes with a sexual turnon, sometimes just for the fun of slipping into a different role. Those who don't do it for sexual reasons don't want to be pegged by anyone as the sexual crossdresser's kind, because doing something because of sexual reasons is even worse than wearing clothing of the other sex, right?!
Then there are the drag queens, who always want to draw attention to themselves. Some don't like those as society often thinks of crossdressers as drag queens first, as these receive the most attention.
Then there are transgendered or transsexuals, pre-hormones, pre-op, post-op, pre-ffs, post-ffs, etc etc.
Transsexuals don't want to be seen as crossdressers, as they truly are women, just in a men's body, while crossdressers are men in a men's body who love women's clothing. Then there are TS who are autogynephilic, but that's a totally different story.
Although these statements are waaaaay oversimplified, they show an underlying problem:There will never be a single group of "crossdressers" who identify as a whole. Compared to classifying a CD/TG/TS, classifying a gay is quite simple.
This heterogenous setup is reflected in this and many other discussion forums. Some just discover their CD side while others are already on the way to the operating table whereas the third group just looks for answers how to get rid of this strange hobby/emotion/being.
Still, despite all the dissimilarity, I joined the forum because it helps me coping with being transgendered when I connect to others that are in a similar situation. Sometimes it can be fun, sometimes it can wear you down. For all of these situations, it's great to have people to be able to share it with.