Not trans? Huh? I don't get it.

[Nadine Spirit]

Hmmm..... Okay, lets see....

#1 - I stated that I consider everyone who does any gender variance thing, like putting on women's clothes when you are a man, to be transgender because I understand the term "transgender" to be the umbrella term that covers everyone who does anything that does not conform with what their birth gender traditionally does.

#2 - I do not need to be a part of any group to feel whole, or included, or a part of something. Trust me, even with this internet thing going on for quite some time, I never bothered to reach out to anyone, other people, other groups, support places, LGBT associations, therapists, or whatever. I was happy enough being a group of two, my wife and I. My wife actually laughed when I read to her how many of you think that I need to be part of a group to feel good about myself.

#3 - I do not think that I am any part woman. I am nowhere on the path to transition. I do not personally think of myself as anything but a man.

#4 - I was fine with calling myself "just" a cross dresser or even a transvestite, until I started telling my friends and family about what I like to do. I kind of got the reaction of "hey that is great, but I am not interested in what you do for your sexual thrills, it is fine, but keep your fetishes to yourself." This idea of cross dressing being a sexual fetish is partly why I started my blog in the first place, to try and help dispel the myth that it is always a sexually related activity. When you type in cross dresser into google, and view the images, I do not relate to those pictures in any way. If you do the same thing with the word transgender, yeah, that is far more along the lines of what I do. When my friends and family type a word into google, personally I want them typing in transgender. I understand now, that many of you do not want to ever be associated with that word, because you think it implies you are transexual. It does not. Both cross dressers and transexuals exist underneath the same term, transgender.

#5 - If I am anything, I am a word nerd! I love words! So many of you are afraid of "labels," but I do not have a fear of them, as they are just words! After viewing the many, and impassioned responses, I simply wish we had clearer, more accurate, more universally accepted descriptors.

#6 - If you don't want to call yourself transgender, then don't. If you want to call yourself "just a guy who occasionally likes to dress in women's clothes but it does not mean anything at all about me, my gender, or my sexuality," then go ahead, but I think it is kind of a mouthful.