Interesting piece. The muddiest part of this conversation is the term “crossdresser(s)”. I’m not sure how many in this community are aware, but that term has a very specific definition in the wider LGBT community, and that is “a person who dresses as the opposite gender for sexual gratification”. Most of you would say that you only dress to express yourself, for fun, or to relieve stress. These basically all boil down to you expressing some part of yourself, no matter how small, that identifies differently than societal expectations of your gender. This puts you in the trans/bi-gender/gender fluid/etc. category. You don’t have to need or want to transition in order to be transgender. That’s the thinking in the larger community by and large anyway.
What I think is interesting is that there is a set of this community who is very resistant to be considered part of the LGBT community. I’ve never really understood that, and I have to wonder if there’s some sort of latent homophobia at play there.
