Why?Originally Posted by Frédérique
There are allowances for different human preferences. Most people will not need to know the psychological motive for preferring apples over oranges, or the color cream vs. sage. It is acknowledged that we all make choices when it comes to eating fruit and painting our living room walls, and so we develop preferences.
It is, however, unusual to want to stretch the gender boundaries, since the majority of people are content in their genders. In fact, it does not occur to 97%-99% of the population to stretch those boundaries in any way. A person's gender is a fundamental building block of who they are, just as binary gender has been fundamental to our survival as a species since time began.
Years ago before the topic of gender or gender dysphoria was researched, it was believed that men were men and women were women, except some men did odd things such as put on women's clothes. The only psychological explanation for men who "did" this "thing" was that they were deviant men. Now, we know better. So when you tell someone that you crossdress, the first question that comes to mind is "why". Most people have a sense that there is a motive for doing this and it is deeper than a mere preference for something that everyone else does, such as choosing a fruit or a paint color for bedroom walls.
Even ancient cultures knew that it was more than just a preference for clothes. They referred to transpersons as "two-spirits", and not "he-who-dons-the-female-tunic".
