Crossdressers aren't trans

I ran across, visually of course, an editorial by Brian McNaught suggesting crossdressers should be in the LGBT definiton as transgender, see article. Well, in his opinion, but not in reality. Crossdressers, as he rightfully says, outnumber transwomen and transmen, those in transistion, and probably by an order of magnitude.

After all, while the entertainers, often called female illusionists or impersonators now, are mostly gay men who like pretending and getting attention as women, the vast majority of the rest are heterosexual men, often married with families. They're not gay and while many do go through facial hair removal to help, they don't go through any medical care to transistion. They don't want to transistion.

In short, they like their dicks and they like to play dressup. That's not transgender. It's not in the DSM-IVTR or will be in the DSM-V, although there are some suggestions to find something there for them to be medical and therefore protected as a condition. Yeah, right. weekdays they're ordinary men and weekends, pretend women. Gee, that's a psychological disorder?

Not according to psychiatrists and psychologists who call crossdressing a hobby at best and a fetish, transvestism, at worst. But when they don't need or want therapy, don't need medical professional help tor transistion, don't want surgeries to become women and don't want to change their birth certificate and records, they don't face discrimination just being who they are in life and work.

Mr. McNaught missed the point that in many fights for equality for LGB and then LGBT folks, crossdressers have been the problem, allowing opponents to use them as an example for all, the proverbial "men in dresses in the bathroom" argument. And after LGB people are protected, transpeople get shuffled aside as something later for fear of being identified with crossdressers.

This happened in Tacoma when it took three votes of the council and the failure of the third voter referendum to reverse the council's vote to add transpeople to anti-discrimination in housing, jobs and other activities of life. And even then the third time almost passed allowing discrimination when they used crossdressers as the poster child for transpeople.

This has also happened in organizations where crossdressers formed their own organization from LGBT organizations because they (CD'ers) outnumbered and dominated the political agenda of the organization before the transpeople jettisoned them to get some real progress. The CD'ers only wanted protections for them and wasn't interested in transpeople.

Any wonder why the LGB people hate the T (transpeople) and the transpeople hate crossdressers? I won't argue some crossdressers eventually transistion, but the percentage is small (<~2%) and those leave the crossdressing community for the transcommunity and eventually as men and women.

In the end, crossdressers aren't anything like bisexual people, and aren't transgender by any stretch of the imagination, but that seems to escape his imagination for the sake of an arugment. Maybe he should ask the professionals, or better yet, ask some real transpeople.