How do we convince society to accept us? I think that what this means to most crossdressers who have seriously thought about it is: “How do we do our part to help create and maintain a social climate in which most people agree that we’re okay?” It would be silly to think that “acceptance” means that people would stand up and applaud us when we enter a restaurant. Likewise, it would be silly to think that there will ever be unanimity in opinions about crossdressing — after all, no such unanimity exists about women wearing slacks … or anything else.

We don’t want to be unacceptable to most people because that would put us in greater danger. In the US, state and federal hate crime laws and corporate policies offer us quite a bit of protection — in a restaurant, at work, and in other settings. But such laws and policies would never have come about if a large percentage of the public thought that we were immoral or otherwise unworthy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How do we maintain a reasonable degree of public acceptance? We can do that best by being friendly, treating others with respect, being self-assured, and not coming across as a threat to non-crossdressers.