Can you CD w/o being TG?

[Asche]

..This discussion is not about you [sara.s], specifically, it's about the thousands of members here who do feel, act, and look feminine when they dress, and this is reflected in their posts if you take the time to read them. If I believe what you tell me about yourself, then there is no argument.

However, there are plenty of people here who are quite willing to insist that any male who wears a dress or otherwise dresses or acts in a way they consider "feminine" is "transgender." Just look through this thread. A lot of people here are just not able to conceive of the idea that a male who does something "feminine" might be doing it for any reason other than to express some sort of feminine identity.

And while we can walk away from cd.com if we feel the folks here are just too bloody-minded, there are people in RL who apply the same Procrustean bed to us who we can't so easily walk away from (e.g., mental health professionals.) For a variety of reasons, I am fairly privileged, in that I can mostly blow such people off. Lots of people -- children in particular -- are not so privileged.

I have no problem with people calling themselves "transgender" if they feel it describes themselves. And to judge just from the titles of the posts here, there are an enormous number of people here for whom it is very much about their gender identity (or identities.)

What I object to is when people want lump together everyone whose behavior society sees as "crossing gender lines" under labels which imply that that behavior is about gender identity, and I argue that "transgender" is one such label.