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Continuum of Gender
Something we learned in the 1990s is that there are distinct differences between the brains of males and females. We know that differentiation process starts at about eight weeks of gestation under the influence of male and female hormones. That process results in the fetus becoming either male or female sexually. What we suspect is that this process also results in a gender identity differentiation within the brain. Usually that process results in similar sex and gender differentiation. But the hormonal differentiation process can go wrong, in perhaps hundreds of different ways, resulting in quite a range of sexual/gender/sexuality expression.
The medical community has only two terms to describe crossgender behavior:
This is very limiting and not very accurate.
Early on Benjamin and others thought crossdressing behavior was a problem with the body, not the brain. They thought if you just fixed the genitals, everything else would be okay. In fact the early treatment for transsexuals began with surgery, then administration of hormones, and finally ending in cross living. This is just the opposite of what the Benjamin Standards of Care prescribe today.
At one end of the gender continuum is the Halloween crossdresser, who is maybe not really crossdressing for gender expression reasons, but simply because it makes a neat costume. At the other end is the transsexual, who has persistent and consistent feelings of being the opposite gender and wants to crossdress all of the time. Transsexuals have the sense that they are truly born in the wrong body.
In between, there is the drag queen, who crossdresses only for performance purposes. There is also the homosexual crossdresser, who crossdresses to attract sexual partners (although this expression is becoming rarer and may have just been a fashionable thing at one point). The transvestic fetishist crossdresses for sexual gratification purposes. The transgenderist lives full time in crossgender mode, typically wants to be female, but for one reason or another isn’t interested in having his genitals changed.
