for ts people it really is totally about identity. for the ts person, it feels like your life is at stake, it feels like the MEANING of your life is your identity....we transition and that feeling that was destroying us on the inside simply goes away...it goes away because the simple act of living as a female fulfills our nature in a way that allows us to survive and hopefully move on to a good quality of life in our proper gender role...

There is NO umbrella. That's what it is... EVERYTHING else is different and not comparable...

It gets confusing because many people that currently view themselves as crossdressers, autogynephiles, gender queer, or use the cop out of "i'm just me", are going to realize over time that they are suffering the same feeling of having no meaning in their life without transition...also many crossdressers (and i'm sorry but this is a simple true fact) tend to have their sexual fantasy to "go all the way" and it feels good to compare themselves to ts, and to push the limits of crossdressing by various means...some (sorry reine!! its just some) of those folks will find out over time that the ever increasing need for more and more is really their internal defenses melting away to the realization that it's transition or else...and in these forums i would not be surprised if this is the place where that feeling starts to creep in, and reading posts that challenge their inclusion with transsexuals gets a strong reaction

IN your day to day life as a crossdresser, you keep your male name, you keep your male job, your male relationships, and outside of en femme time, you are referred to as male...regardless of how often you dress and present female, your male life fulfills you in the same way my female life fulfills me...
the gender binary society has many benefits not the least of which is being able to communicate effectively to each other, people communicate to me as female..this is part of my fulfilled life...people communicate to cd's as male (except en femme) and calling a crossdresser a transgender person seems wrong... calling the behaviour transgender seems fine...

In the day to day life a transsexual, the act of transitioning may be transgender behaviour as well, but its anthema to say after transition that we are transgender...even though many people do just that, and many transsexuals accept it...i've accepted in the past, but the more i see my old life in the rear view mirror, the less i like the term

For the people who live in between, it's impossible for me to say...there are so many different views and i would venture that alot of people are very upset, focused on their inability to transition, or just confused and uncertain about themselves and settle for something other than transition, and others are quite secure in their own understanding that they are a third/blended/fluid gender... all of them are very unhappy thinking of themselves as crossdressers...and there is no easy classification other than perhaps transgendered ... but this group is not transsexual and only compares to transsexuals at the most superficial level....

i do think the OP has it right in a way...whats the difference between tg and cd??? that's a fair question, but in my mind, i've realized over the years that its best to leave the ts out of that equation...