The Difference

What's the difference between crossdressers and in-transition and especially post-transition women?

Crossdressers focus on the clothes, mostly dressing up, even if it's just a day around the home, a few errands, whatever, but especially parties, meetings, events. They identify as male-bodied and -born men (notice women crossdressing is fashion and part of society).

They seek their "feminine side" and buy and adjust the clothes to fit the body. They use makeup to hide facial hair (note a few do go through facial hair removal) and makeup to make themselves think they're pretty. Not women mind you, but a caricature of women.

They like to pretend their women without wanting to be one let alone living like one. That's not their goal. Their goal is simply a hobby around clothes and makeup. Nothing more, just a hobby, playing women and pretending they are a woman without really wanting to be one.

Crossdressers always go to work as men on Mondays. They're usually married, often with children or families, and relish in their male privilege in life and work. The last thing they want is to actually be a woman. It's their last thought and worst fear.

Transwomen want the body of a woman. It's why they go through the medical process to get and take hormone replacement therapy, some get cosmetic facial surgery and/or breast implants, but always to get the sex affirmation surgery, common known as sex reassignment surgery.

Transwomen buy the clothes to be who they are. They'll work on the body being female, being normal as possible if they were born female. That's their goal, the body, and the clothes are there to express the body and the mind.

They wear clothes as normal women wear clothes, for the situation and occasion. They live as women because they are women, and the clothes are the expression of themselves as women, whether it's just working around the home, living, working or going out, it's always appropriate and normal, even ordinary.

Transwomen want to be invisible in the ordinary world of women. You can't tell them from other women because they are just like other women. They are, live, work, and go through life as every woman. It's who they are.

That's the difference. Being and living as a woman versus pretending to be one with clothes and makeup. The reality of being a woman versus the fantasy to be one. One never wants to be a woman and the other always wanted to be woman.

What's not to understand about that? And you wonder why they often don't agree with each other?