Thanks for your detailed post, which I enjoyed. I see it all the time on crossdressing websites and forums in which people state "...my feminine side...". I've always found this fascinating. So, I slip into a dress and suddenly my feminine side emerges as though out of fog! Everyone's different and different people get different things out of crossdressing but for me I view myself as the classic crossdresser in that it's the clothes that do it for me. I'm a heterosexual male who has no interest in looking or behaving like a woman, and I don't want to be a woman, non-binary or undergo a transition, and all the rest. I simply like wearing what has traditionally and still is referred to as women's clothes.
And here is the root of the issue. Let's say that suddenly all of the "men's clothing" and "women's clothing" labels are dropped and clothes are just clothes. Strictly speaking crossdressing would vanish. And so then when I don a different set of clothes I suddenly start feeling all feminine? As I say, it's a comment I see all the time and have always struggled with because it just doesn't relate to me and I've been crossdressing since my teens and more seriously for the past 20 years. For me, crossdressing is simple and no big deal and why I don't endlessly self-analyse myself because I don't see what all the fuss is about because at the end of the day they are just clothes.
One final comment, effectively all women crossdress all the time because they wear what they like. As a result you don't see women endlessly self analysing themselves. I can't imagine a woman donning a 2 piece suit and then suddenly thinking to herself "I feel all masculine" or "This brings out my masculine side". It just doesn't happen.
