I’d like to ask for your opinion about where I fit in. I’m straight, cis-gendered, happily married and have a fairly regular (male) life. BUT… I enjoy wearing women’s underwear and clothes. Most places on-line or in ‘real’ spaces seem to center around people like me being transgender, which I’m not. Alternatively, there appears to be an assumption that such places are for people who are gay, which I’m also not. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere for straight, cis-gendered crossdressers to exist or truly express themselves. So where do I fit in?
I’ll begin by saying that sexuality has nothing to do with gender identity, and it has nothing to do with what you wear. Gay guys can wear tuxedos and straight girls can, well, also wear tuxedos.
That being said, any deviation of BOYS WEAR PANTS and GIRLS WEAR DRESSES sort of overlaps and mingles within the LGBTQ+ community. Places (both virtual and in real life) that are welcoming/intended for gender expansive people tend to also be welcoming/intended for non-straight people.
All letters of the LGBTQ+ acronym are underrepresented and minority (not necessarily in the racial sense) communities. We’re all in this together.
When it comes to who YOU are, well, that’s up to YOU. YOU get to decide what term you are comfortable with. YOU also get to decide IF you want to identify as ANY term. You can just be Joe, the Dude Who Wears Girl Clothes. You can be non-binary, you can be gender queer, you can be anything and everything and nothing at all. The world is obsessed with putting people into boxes and categorizing people, especially when it comes to being anything besides MALE, FEMALE, STRAIGHT, and GAY.
It’s not up to me or anyone else to assign a label or to enforce a label. Don’t feel you HAVE to have one. Don’t feel you have to live up to someone else’s definition of who is allowed or not allowed to identify as one (or more) of the myriad of gender options.
If you do choose to identify as anything, then you’ll need to accept that you probably won’t feel super confident that the term is absolutely perfect. Each term will likely have some caveats.
My perspective (and I can’t stress enough that this is my own perspective and I am certainly not an authority on anything) is that clothes and gender identity CAN overlap, but don’t HAVE to.
I’ve been wearing “girl clothes” for my entire life. One of my earliest memories is trying on my mom’s shoes when I wasn’t even five years old. I knew it wasn’t wrong, but I also knew it wasn’t typical. Knowing that I was outside of the ‘what boys are allowed to do’ mentality, my clothing preference had to remain a secret.
Gender as a binary is thrust upon us before we can even crawl. It is enforced and we are expected to stay in one of two lanes. But if you’ve been in a car with me then you’d know that I have no problem swerving all over the highway.
Before I learned the word “crossdresser” I was a boy that wore girl clothes. When I got older, I was a teenager that wore girl clothes. Then I was a man who wore girl clothes. I wasn’t aware that there were terms such as non-binary or options for identifying as anything but MAN or WOMAN. I identified as a crossdresser because I fit the definition as it was described to me. I was a guy that wore girl clothes.
Basically I did not think that what I wore had anything to do with how I thought of myself. I was male, more or less by default. But I also didn’t think that I was born in the wrong body or that transitioning was the right choice for me. Maybe I was enlightened at a young age but I didn’t think you had to be a girl to wear girl clothes.
As I got older and as my dressing expanded from panties to real clothes to makeup and wigs, and as I learned more about gender identity and the options beyond MAN and WOMAN, I realized that how I dressed and how I felt and I thought about myself while en femme was more than just about enjoying wearing girl clothes. The more femme I presented, the further away I felt I was from being a man who wore girl clothes. I had a femme name, I had a femme email address, and I had femme friends.
I realized that what I wore was a significant part of my overall identity, and gender is part of identity. The thought of me still being a guy that wore girl clothes became almost overly simplistic. I realized how much of who I am overlapped with what I wore, whether it was panties under my man clothes or a floor length gown. Clothes weren’t just clothes, they represented my gender identity.
I outgrew the word crossdresser.
And that’s normal for many of us. Not all of us, but for many of us.
My opinion, if you want it, is that if you are a dude that wears girl clothes, and you still feel like a dude when you wear girl clothes, then it doesn’t sound like girl clothes shifts how you feel about yourself. It sounds like you just like girl clothes (and who can blame you?). If this sounds like you, then I’d say you are a crossdresser.
Again, that term may not always fit, and there are elements of everything that we don’t feel we associate with. Yes, there is overlap between non-straight folks and non-binary folks, but again, we are all part of a community that is outside of the straight/cisgender world.
Let me revisit sexuality and gender identity one more time. I would never suggest that sexual identiy isn’t important, but I think there is too much emphasis on it when it comes to gender expansive people. I think it’s more helpful to say “I am attracted to ________” as opposed to saying “I am ________”.
What I mean is that as I type this, I am wearing a sheer black chemise and drinking coffee. My wife is asleep down the hall. I am, at this moment, in love with her. In an hour I will be wearing stockings, a corset, bra and panty, a dress, and heels as I head to my makeup appointment. Later today I’ll wash my makeup off, put on my boy clothes, and go out to dinner with my wife.
Every minute of the day (and of my life) I am in love with her. What does that make me? Since my gender presentation changes, and since my gender identity is stronger one way or the other throughout the day, does my sexuality change? Am I a lesbian when I am en femme because I am attracted to and married to a woman? Am I straight when I am wearing boy clothes and using masculine pronouns? What about the moments (such as right now) when I am neither?
This is overly nuanced but that is my point. It would be much easier and efficient and accurate to simply say that I am married to a wonderful woman, regardless of what I am wearing. If anyone feels the need to assign labels for my sexuality, then that’s their business. Neither ‘straight’ or ‘lesbian’ feels quite right, but it doesn’t matter at all. Like gender identity options, not every label necessarily feels completely correct.
Love, Hannah
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Hannah McKnight 