In Transition 6

by Leela Ginelle

Am I cross dresser? When I was young, that was the main term I knew for my gender. I didn’t really like it, because I didn’t like my gender at all. Being a cross dresser meant having to do something I didn’t want to do. Except that, when I was doing it, it was the only thing I wanted to do.

When I was doing it, wearing the clothes I liked, I felt the way I liked to feel: sensual, comfortable & free. It was like being let out of a prison, and, like an escaped prisoner, I felt hunted. “What if I get caught?” I’d always think, and I’d wish I didn’t like it.

So what does that make me? I seem to fit the definition of cross dressers I’ve always come across. I get an erotic pleasure from wearing women’s clothes, I tend to do it at home for privacy’s sake, and I like to do it when making love.

To me, that doesn’t tell the whole story, though. I like wearing women’s clothes when not at home, too, and I like calling them “clothes,” as opposed to “women’s clothes.” When I do that, it’s generally not an erotic experience. Would it be erotic if I wasn’t doing it privately?

I wonder that. My girlfriend has the gift of gender blindness. All the stigmas I have around clothes and behaviors are absent from her. When I can experience the same acceptance around my gender she has, I forget it’s present. It stops being something I’m “doing,” and just becomes who I am. In those moments, my gender is not erotic to me.

If I was free to express my gender however I wanted, whenever and wherever I wanted, would it still seem sexual to me? Maybe that’s the wrong question. Who do I think holds the key to that freedom? Who is it that calls the way I dress cross dressing? Who is it who’s putting words on my self expression at all?

In the moment, it’s always me. I learned the words because I wanted to explain my urges to myself. The words are all stigmatized, though. I want to follow my urges without stigma, but the words are still there. What about the words “cross dresser”?

To my mind, it calls up a shameful, secretive man, hiding in his home in a dress. That’s what I read in Ann Landers, probably, and whenever I wore a dress since then, that’s how I saw myself. Is that true, though? What about when I was a “drag queen”?

Drag queens, to me, were glamorous and outrageous. They could never be ashamed. In my purple wig and platform shoes, I thought I’d escaped “cross dressing.” When I was done, though, I felt just as ashamed. I saw myself as a “fetishist.”

How do I see myself today? It depends on when you ask. On a good day, I feel infinite. What we call gender, just feels like a life force flowing through me, that I’m giving expression to, and that defies terms and diagnoses. On a bad day, the terms above fit quite nicely.

My problem is, when I feel infinite, I think it’s sign of my brilliant progress, and when I feel poor, it becomes a confirmation of my worst thoughts. In truth, I see myself as a passenger on a ferry, headed from one shore to another, and the trip is so scary, I can’t really think about it. Instead I scan the water looking for clues about the future. I prefer good ones, but my mind takes any it can get.

I’d like to think that could stop, that knowing I have an annoying habit would cause me to drop it. But, the truth is, I’m probably not done with it, yet. I don’t always recognize when I’m in it, and it still seems to serve an important purpose. It’s a kind of security blanket, something that gives me the illusion that things are safe.

I’m aware of it now, in the big picture, and I’m starting to see through it, at times, but it’s still what I reach for when I’m bored or stressed. The other thing I reach for is my gender. Not my gender, per se, but a particular sense of my gender I developed when it was hidden.

It’s a reinforcing loop. In my fantasy, I see myself as in control, transforming myself into a beautiful female figure, but I see the figure as helpless, something that could never survive in the world. My gender becomes forbidden fruit. Yet, in my life, my gender is emerging, and I rarely feel helpless or vulnerable. Neither my “clue hunting” nor my fantasizing seem to effect its progress.

Now I read about gender theory, and the authors inevitably touch on gender discrimination and marginalization. This is something I occasionally feel in subtle ways. I don’t like to admit that, and I don’t enjoy reading about it. When I leave the house appearing androgynous a voice starts in my head.

The voice attacks me, and I come back. But no matter how many answers I give, I don’t win. I think everyone has that voice. It picks at anything that seems abnormal. Since gender lines are the bedrock of normalcy, crossing them seem to make the voice the loudest. I wish it was only in my head, but it’s in our culture.

I don’t want to make myself vulnerable to those kinds of attacks, but hiding myself doesn’t seem to be an option. The best option seems to be writing about it, talking about it, and learning to take the culture and normality less seriously. I fell better already.

Leela Ginelle is a journalist and the author of the Gender Cycle: Three Plays. Please visit zer blog at www.leelaginelle.com.