So much of our inner thoughts have (or currently still do) circle around who we are.

This can be wondering what we want, who we want to be, and what all of this means.  These answers come with time, patience, and honesty.

It's not uncommon for us to want to (or feel that we have to) put a name to our identity.  Afterall, a name (or label) can be comforting for two reasons:

1) If we identify as a crossdresser, as transgender, as non-binary, or as something else, we automatically belong to a larger community.  If you are a crossdresser you should know that you are THE crossdresser.  You are A crossdresser.  There are countless others like you.  You are not alone in how you feel.  You are not alone in who you are.  To paraphrase the title of an Elvis record, 50,000,000 Crossdressers Can't Be Wrong.  It can't be wrong to crossdress if so many others feel the same as you do.

Of course there's no way to know how many crossdressers there are in the universe.  And we don't know (and will never know) for two reasons:

a) It's unlikely every crossdresser in the world will ever admit to crossdressing so a census is useless

b) Gender identity terminology differs from person to person.  You may identify as a crossdresser, but someone else may consider you transgender.  More on that in a moment.

2) Having a name for who we are can offer some sort of guidance for what we should do next

What I mean is that for many of us once we have acknowledged this aspect of ourselves we need to ACCEPT this aspect of ourselves.  What acceptance means is knowing that this is who you are, this is a part of you, this is not a phase, this is not something you will outgrow.  (and I mean, thank God, I love this aspect of myself). 

But what comes AFTER the acceptance?  For some of us it's "well, what now?  What should I do next?".

Having a name for our identity CAN offer a tiny roadmap... But not really.  Once I fully embraced (which comes after acceptance) who I am, I started to, well, progress.  For years I identified as a crossdresser.  I didn't think there was any correlation between what I wore (and wanted to wear) and gender identity.  I was a BOY that wore GIRL clothes and that was that.  As I started to look a tiny bit deeper and as I became more honest with myself, I realized how I presented kind of... Shifted how I felt about myself, the world, and gender.  Looking in the mirror and my reflection showing long hair, makeup, jewelry, a cute dress, and stilettos caused me to realize that I was more than a BOY that wore GIRL clothes.  I was no longer wearing clothes for a different gender, I was doing my best to present as femme.  That's a little different (to me) than just wearing panties under my boy clothes.

Once I embraced (essentially falling in love with who I am) this aspect of myself, I felt like I was a balloon slipped away from someone's grasp.  I was free!  Who knows where I would land?  Who knows what kind of adventures I will have?  Or, putting it more accurately, who knows what I will wear?  Literally nothing was off the table.  At the same time, a tiny voice was always there, asking "well, what's next?" and "where is all of this going?". 

This is what my wife was thinking as well.  Sometimes she thought this silently, sometimes not.  I am always thankful she shared her feelings and concerns and honestly her fears even when it was hard to hear.  Especially when it was hard to hear.  I felt guilty that something that made me feel incredibly happy brought her so much anxiety. 

To her, all of THIS was leading to transitioning.  I could see why.  I mean, she saw her boyfriend admitting to wearing panties, then wearing a nightgown to bed, then helping her husband pick out a wig, teaching him makeup...  She saw in real time my journey.  And she knew journeys have an end point.  At the rate I was going it was understandable to assume that estrogen and a legal name change was on the horizon.

Having a name for our identity CAN offer a tiny roadmap... But not really.

But I never thought I was going to that destination.  I didn't think (and still don't) that living full time was the right decision for me.  There are two reasons why I don't feel I need (or should) transition:

1) I don't feel I was assigned the wrong gender at birth.  I don't feel I have the wrong body.  I don't feel WRONG presenting as masculine.  I don't feel a lot of the things that others have told me they felt when they realized that transitioning was right for them.

2) When I embraced who I was (and still am) I reflected a lot about gender as a binary and realized how pointless that was.  Why do we have such defined boundaries about what a boy is allowed to wear?  Why is there such a need to limit what someone can wear based on their genitalia?  It was so stupid the more I thought about it.  WE as humans invented this.  We enforce these arbitrary rules.  Once I woke up to how gender norms were created I decided that I don't have to abide by them.  Essentially I didn't feel that I HAD to transition IF I wanted to wear a dress or present as femme in the real world.  I can present as masc or femme or something in between or as something new. 

In many ways, my journey is over.  Or at least the soul searching aspect.  I know who I am, and I have really been who I am for over ten years.  The needle hasn't moved on the gender dashboard.  Of course I have done a LOT over the last decade and I anticipate doing even more throughout Hannah's life, but new adventures don't necessarily mean I am rethinking or reevaluating who I am or who I want to be.  I like where I am.  No matter how Hannah's life evolves it doesn't chip away at how I feel when I am in boy mode.  I like both of my lives.

As who I am evolved, 'crossdresser' didn't feel right.  To me (and I can't stress it enough that this is my perspective) crossdressing is about clothes, not about gender.  When I wore panties I thought of myself as a boy who wore panties.  When I wore a nightgown I thought of myself as a boy who wore nightgowns.  Buuuuuuuut as my wardrobe evolved I couldn't help but feel that the person in the mirror wasn't a boy who was wearing mascara, a bodycon dress, and high heels.  There was something else I wanted the world (or at least my reflection) to see me as.  Clearly I was doing my best to, well, be a girl.  When I realized that I accepted that girl clothes were indeed shifting to how I felt about gender as a concept and how I felt about my own gender.

Essentially I felt I outgrew my own definition of what crossdressing was. 

So...  What was I?  I was in gender limbo.  I didn't think transgender was the right name for me because I didn't think that the decisions associated with identifying as transgender were the right ones for me.  At this time I thought that transitioning and transgender went hand in hand.  I thought that all trans people HAD or were in the process) of transitioning.  I shared my thinking with a friend who offered her own perspective on what The T Word meant.  She took a very broad view of it and felt that it was more inclusive than I was thinking.  She said some trans women transition, some do not.  Some trans women live full time, some do not.  Her thinking went beyond my own view of gender.  Just as I felt that gender norms and gender roles were invented and pointless and didn't mean that a boy couldn't wear a skirt, she felt that being transgender didn't have to imply that someone had or will or is transitioning. 

She thought of it as an umbrella term and there were many other labels that were a subcategory of it.  Genderqueer, crossdresser, agender...  all of those terms were just a more specific identity of being transgender.  It's not unlike identifying as queer.  Queer could mean gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, as well as gender identity. 

Thanks to her, I felt comfortable identifying as transgender and if you wanted to get more specific I feel that bi-gender is a very nice fit.  Since I go between masc and femme (at least when it comes to leaving my house), I have two gender presentations, so it's not a stretch to have two different gender identities. 

I do get some pushback from others in our community.  It doesn't happen often but I'll get the occasional email about how it's wrong for me to identify as transgender since I haven't or will transition.  I shrug it off.  I don't want to argue about gender with others because we all have different perspectives on what all of these terms mean.  Again, one person's transgirl is another person's crossdresser.  My perspective on The T Word has even offended other transgender women.  Transitioning is not easy.  I will never know how impactful that could be.  Sadly it's not unusual for someone to transition and lose loved ones because of it.  The stigma, the cost, the process, the pain, the emotional, the financial impact is all very stressful.  To some, all of this has given them "the right" to identify as transgender.  They've earned it and to have someone else who hasn't had the same experience as they had identify the same way can be, well, insulting or may invalidate their own journey.

I don't want to argue about gender with others because we all have different perspectives on what all of these terms mean.

I get it, I really do.  In a way it's not unlike two people having the same job title.  One person may have worked very hard for years and worked their way to a position only to have someone else just be...  given that title without having to do the work to earn it can be aggravating.  Again, it may invalidate the work that they did and may feel that the other person didn't earn the same job title. 

I don't engage with most people who disagree with my gender identity.  I don't feel I need to explain who I am or defend who I am or justify who I am.  I also know (as mentioned earlier) different people can and probably do define what all of these labels mean.  Essentially you yourself may identify as a crossdresser BUT to others you are transgender and vice versa.  Language evolves and changes and can even differ in other parts of the world.  I feel that the term 'tranny' is a slur, but to my nonbinary friends and fellow bloggers across the pond the word doesn't have the same stigma as it has here in the United States.  It also doesn't seem to be a slur to those who are from an older generation than myself.

Which brings me to the point of this post.  Gender terminology and generations.  People living beyond gender as a binary is not a recent thing.  Being transgender/nonbinary is not a recent "invention":  There were transgender people before me and there will be transgender people after I have strutted off this mortal coil.  As long as there have been the thinking that gender was binary there have been nonbinary people.  I suppose if gender as a binary didn't exist we wouldn't have nonbinary people because you can't, well break a rule if there are no rules.

But that's another topic for another day.

The future has always belonged to the younger generations.  I feel that I am helping (or at least doing my best) to make the world a better, more inclusive place to the transgender community that will come after me, just as the transgender community fought for the world that I currently live in.  Basically you don't plant a tree so YOU can enjoy the shade.  You plant a tree for others to enjoy after you are long gone.

It's encouraging to see the next generation embrace their own queerness, whether it's related to sexuality or gender identity.  I work for a college so I interact with a lot of people much younger than I am.  It's not uncommon to talk to students who identify as nonbinary or let me know that they have different pronouns, a different name, or a different gender from their legal one.  I am used to this.  Not only because of who I am, but because I've been in this career for twenty years. 

But beyond feeling encouraged, I also feel reassured.  I feel that what I see is a sign that things are going in the right direction when it comes to inclusivity.  Not only are individuals embracing who they are, their fellow classmates don't really seem phased either.  Someone else's queerness (again, gender and/or sexuality) was normalized through representation in movies and books and other mediums.  There's a good chance that someone saw a transgender person (positively and accurately portrayed) in a movie before they met a transgender person in real life.  

This was the opposite of what I experienced when I was younger.  If there was a nonbinary person in a movie it was probably a boy wearing a dress and played for laughs.  It was someone who was meant to be funny or they were meant to be seen as a pervert or someone confused or gay.  Thankfully we have (mostly) moved on from that, but those portrayals, especially at such an impressionable age) led me to think that crossdressers (including myself) were indeed a joke or sexual deviants.

Every person and every generation finds their way, and they do so differently than others and earlier generations.  Their own methods, their own perspectives, and their own identities.  Sometimes they are re-invented terms (similar to how 'queer' once meant 'strange' but then became a slur to the LGBTQ+ community but now is an accepted and inclusive word for those who are not straight or cisgender) but there are also new words.  New identities.  New rules.  A new world. 

Everything I've written here is meant to be a preface for my next article: The Rise of the Femboy'.  Stay tuned.

Love, Hannah