Category: Verbal Hygiene

The kind of coming out we need

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Last month I highlighted some good research done by Lal Zimman at the University of Colorado, where he found two conceptions of coming out among trans people that were very different from the way the term is used by lesbians and gay men. In the comments, my friend Caprice Bellefleur hit on the next point that I was going to make: that there’s a fourth way that coming out is used.

There is a further complication about the use of the term “coming out” among trans people. Many, especially those who identify as crossdressers, use it to mean the first time they appeared in public in their alternate gender. They may not have disclosed anything to anyone.

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In keeping with Zimman’s use of the letter “d,” with declaring a gender transition and disclosing a transgender history, I’ll talk about non-transitioning trans people displaying non-normative gender expression.

Zimman explicitly excluded crossdressers from his definition of “transgender,” acknowledging its use as a euphemism for “transsexual,” but when I met him in February I was there to advocate rejecting that sense of the word, based in part on the fact that there’s so much overlap. Many of his “transgender people,” particularly on the feminine spectrum, identify for years as crossdressers, and in fact the “declaration” he described is a performative speech act that, in the eyes of many trans people, is enough to allow someone to pass from “umbrella trans” (or even “just a cross-dresser” or “just a lesbian”) into “really trans.”

(I honestly don’t know much about coming out for queens and butch lesbians. I do know that for some gay men, coming out allows some feminine self-expression, and similarly allows some masculine expression for lesbians, but I’ve heard that that is still stigmatized by many people, gay and straight.)

As I said before, I’m not really happy with these three uses of “coming out.” To put this in perspective, there are several advantages that the “gay” kind of being out confers on the individual and the community:

  1. The dishonesty and self-denial necessary to be closeted tend to be habit-forming and have a corrosive effect on character
  2. The same habits of dishonesty and self-denial have a corrosive effect on the tenor of group interactions.
  3. Large numbers of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals being out contribute to safety in numbers.
  4. It’s easy to dehumanize people when you can pretend they’re not there, but it’s a lot harder when you know someone.
  5. It’s easy to hate people when they feel ashamed of themselves, but it’s harder when they have self-respect.

The two forms of “coming out” that Zimman describes (declaring and disclosing) fulfill all these characteristics, but they are only available to people who choose to transition and genderqueer or genderfluid people. Someone who has the exact same thoughts, beliefs and feelings but decides not to transition or change their primary gender expression has only the display form of coming out available to them. When people display they are visible in public as trans people, but in clothing and accessories that they normally don’t wear, and with makeup that changes their appearance. They may not be recognized by people who know them in their primary identity. Most importantly, they don’t use the same name. How is anyone supposed to know that the Tiffany Sparkle that they met at the dance club last Friday is the same person as Bob from Accounting?

This means that displaying has only one of the four advantages of coming out, the “safety in numbers” advantage, and that only when people are actively cross-dressing. There may be some feeling of liberation in this, but it is fleeting, and at all other times they still have to hide and to deny their true feelings. And while they hide, others are unaware that people they know are “one of those” and know that all these people are so ashamed of themselves they don’t want their true names known.

I seem to be the exception here. I decided not to transition in 1995, and I decided to come out in 1996. I came out “gay style,” by putting up a website and telling my co-workers. I didn’t start wearing dresses to work; I just told people. And when a trans-related topic came up, I came out again as necessary.

I’ve reaped three of the four benefits of coming out. I’ve felt hugely better being able to talk about this important part of my life, and knowing that all these people know and are still treating me with respect. I’ve used it to build bridges in my community and break down walls of hatred and mistrust. But I don’t get the benefit of strength in numbers.

I don’t know any other non-transitioning trans people who’ve come out the way I did, and that’s a shame. Because there are a lot of closeted trans people out there who don’t seem to know that it’s possible to come out this way. The only way they see out of the closet is to disclose a gender transition. That’s not right.

Who owns “transvestite”?

grvsmth

Courtney O’Donnell blogs about media representation of trans people, and serves a useful watchdog role. It’s possible to go overboard with that, and normally she recognizes it. Last September she wrote, “As for ‘transvestite’, some have made it know they find this word offensive, too, however, I’m also aware that it’s usage as an umbrella term is rather widespread — particularly in the United Kingdom. I’d be curious to hear what trans people from the other side of the pond feel about the term.” Last week in a post about Rosalinda Rebolledo, she asked whether Rebolledo’s story counted as “transgender news.”

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In a post today, O’Donnell goes overboard. The actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who’s actually less silly than a lot of Hollywood people, was asked by USA Today, “But seriously, how can she look so fresh the day after partying until near-sunrise for the Met Gala?” Paltrow replied, “Are you crazy? I’m like RuPaul! I have so much makeup on. Foundation! Last night, I was literally a transvestite.”

(Don’t even start on the “literally.” That battle is lost, people. We’ve got plenty of words that mean “in the real world, not metaphorically or metonymically.” Use them, and forget this one.)

O’Donnell created an image saying that Paltrow “Ridicules Trans People,” and writes, “Trans people are not objects to ridicule. While it may appear to be a thoughtless comment by an ignorant person, however, a celebrity of her stature yields quite a bit of influence among her fans, so she’s going to have to own up to committing this very public blunder. I wouldn’t go so far to say Paltrow is transphobic, but she in dire need of education. If we can get her to apologize, she can redeem herself and send a bit of good PR our way.”

A lot of O’Donnell’s commenters said she was making too big a deal of it, to which O’Donnell replied, “Remember, those that do violence against trans people do not check for labels — crossdressers, transvestites, transsexuals — trans people are all one and the same to them. Being mocked in the media by a celebrity, no matter how slight, normalizes this behavior. While readers are free to give Paltrow a pass, I’d like to think I’m helping ensure that mocking trans people isn’t so easily blurted out during interviews anymore.”

I’m not really sure what ignorance Paltrow is exhibiting, let alone mockery, and what kind of “education” O’Donnell has in mind for her. Beyond that, though, where does O’Donnell get off policing the word “transvestite”? It’s clear from her September post that she doesn’t identify as one, and doesn’t understand the nuances of the word. Why not leave it to someone who does?
IMG_0535When I was a cute young thing I didn’t need to wear any makeup at all. But at 41, I’m not just a transvestite but an aging transvestite. I have to spend an hour slathering the stuff on just so that I don’t see my beard shadow in the mirror. It’s a pain in the ass, and it’s kind of nice to know that People‘s “Most Beautiful Woman” has to put up with it much more often than I do.

I don’t feel at all ridiculed by the comparison. I don’t feel mocked by someone who wears a lot of makeup pointing out that we do too. I don’t see how it could encourage people to violently attack us. In fact, I feel sympathy and validation from Paltrow.

I’d appreciate it if O’Donnell and (any other non-transvestite activists) could back off from the term “transvestite” and focus on whatever flavor of trans she identifies with. If we want her help, we can ask for it. And actually, if she wants to give a signal boost to this effort, that’d be nice.

(P.S. See also Jeremy Feist’s take.)

Three definitions of transgender

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You may think you know what “transgender” means. But if you’ve been around the trans community for any length of time, you know that the word has been fought over before. There are at least three different ways that the word is used, and all apply to a somewhat different group of people.

First let’s take a look at one of the most widely circulated definitions, found in the GLAAD Media Reference Guide:

Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. The term may include, but is not limited to transsexuals, cross-dressers and other gender non-conforming people.

This is the famous “transgender umbrella” that we see in promotional materials and statistics. Note the “gender identity and/or expression” part – that’s the inclusive, welcoming part.

Now there’s another definition of “transgender” that conflicts with it. The funny thing is that it’s on the exact same page of GLAAD’s media guide, in the definition of “gender identity”:

Gender identity is one’s internal, personal sense of their gender. For transgender people, their birth-assigned gender and their own internal sense of gender identity are not the same.

In this definition, note that for transgender people – all of them – the assigned gender and gender identity are not the same. Those are the exclusionary, rejecting parts.

These two definitions contradict each other. The first one includes people whose gender identity doesn’t differ from our assigned gender, while the second one does not. They don’t both belong in the same organization, let alone on the same page.

There’s a third one, which was noted by Lal Zimman in his 2009 paper (PDF, page 58):

my use of the term transgender is not intended in the ‘umbrella label’ sense often found in literature dealing with issues of gender and sexuality. Nor is it intended as a pancultural descriptor to be applied to any gender variant community. Rather, my usage mirrors the meaning this term has taken on in many English-speaking transgender communities in the United States, in which it can serve as a demedicalized substitute for the term transsexual.

The GLAAD media guide notes that many people are substituting the term “transgender” for “transsexual,” and that not everyone is comfortable with that: “Unlike transgender, transsexual is not an umbrella term, as many transgender people do not identify as transsexual.” But then they give up on defining transsexual beyond that. Zimman provides a definition: “those individuals whose sense of themselves as men or women runs contrary to the gender they were assigned at birth, and who have therefore decided to make a social transition from one gender role to another (regardless of what medical interventions, if any, are pursued).”

I want to modify Zimman’s definition here, because he is mixing something that is observable (a gender role transition) with something that is not observable (a gender identity mismatch). His “therefore,” although it is widely claimed by many, is also unjustified. There are a significant number of people who transition to a new gender and report having no clear feeling of a gender identity mismatch (or even a gender identity at all) before transition; Zinnia Jones is probably the best known: “For most of my childhood, I didn’t feel like I had a meaningful identity of any kind, gender or otherwise.”

This leaves us with three definitions of “transgender”: the umbrella, the gender identity mismatch, and the transitioner. There is a lot more overlap among these definitions than the diagram above would suggest, but it remains true that there are people who fit under the umbrella who do not transition or have a gender identity mismatch. There are people who have a gender identity mismatch and fit under the umbrella who do not transition. And there are people who transition but do not have a gender identity mismatch or fit under the umbrella.

This is important to me as someone who fits under the umbrella but is not planning to transition. I hope that GLAAD will revise its Media Reference Guide to be more consistent with its stated goals of inclusion.

Good research of the month: “coming out” in trans communities

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As you could probably tell, I feel bad describing research like the Trans Mental Health Study in such strong negative terms. I know that the authors wanted to do something to help the trans community, and they thought that was what they were doing. I want to balance that out by highlighting examples of transgender research done right.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Lal Zimman, a fellow linguist who studies transgender language. In 2009, Zimman published a paper (PDF) summarizing his research into the concept of “coming out” in transgender communities.

A.C. Liang (1997) and Kathleen Wood (1997) reported on “coming out” stories of gay men and lesbians. In these stories, the term “coming out” is used to refer to the sharing of a sexual orientation. Because this orientation may not be visible, Zimman says, “Liang argues that reference to the ‘processual’ nature of coming out – in other words, the fact that coming out is not a single event but is rather reenacted time and again throughout an individual’s lifetime – is a crucial component of the coming out narrative.”

Zimman interviewed nine individuals who had completed a gender transition and found a pattern that will probably be familiar to a lot of you. They used “coming out” to share a transgender identity, but in one of two specific ways that were very different from those reported for gay men and lesbians. Those who hadn’t transitioned to their target gender used “coming out” to mean a declaration (in Zimman’s terms) of their desire or plans to transition to a different gender. Those who had transitioned used “coming out” to mean a disclosure of their history of gender transition.

This is the right way to do research on an unrepresentative sample. Ask relatively open-ended questions and listen to the answers. Note common threads among the answers. Use the stories to make existential arguments – ones that highlight the existence of something that may not have been acknowledged by the academic community. This is particularly valuable to show exceptions to generalizations that others have made. In this case, Zimman identifies exceptions to the generalizations that Liang and Wood made about coming out narratives.

Even though I think Zimman’s research is exemplary here, I want to note that I have a verbal hygiene argument with what he found. I don’t like these uses of the term “coming out,” and I think they’re bad for both the trans community and the wider LGBT community. But that’s a topic for another post. In the meantime, keep studying trans communities!

“Gender identity” in the Violence Against Women Act

grvsmth

Recently, I got some messages asking me to press for transgender and lesbian, gay and bisexual inclusion in the Violence Against Women Act, a law that sunsets regularly but has just been reauthorized by Congress. The action alerts also talked about “gender identity,” and the definition that came to mind is this one from GLAAD, which is echoed in other definitions around the country: “One’s internal, personal sense of being a man or a woman (or a boy or a girl).”

Photo: UltraViolet.org
Photo: UltraViolet.org
I was concerned about the use of “gender identity” in this bill. Being white and middle-class I’m at relatively low risk, but there are other trans people from all ethnic and economic backgrounds who occasionally go out in public presenting as women, with male bodies unmodified by hormone or surgical treatment, and without a strong belief that we are women. We may be seen by others as women, as trans people or as gay men. We may be targeted for sexual assault, stalking or other violent actions based on those perceptions. A law that is based on the “internal sense” definition of gender identity would fail to protect us.

Today I took a closer look and discovered that this fight actually is relevant to people like me. The Violence Against Women Act, originally passed in 1994, provided grants for nonprofits and government agencies to run programs aimed at preventing violence against women and providing support for women who are victims of domestic and sexual violence.

The expanded version of the law passed by the Senate last year, but rejected by the House of Representatives, and then passed this week by both houses of Congress, includes new protections that weren’t in the original bill. Overall, it includes “dating violence” and “stalking” as eligible categories of violence in addition to “domestic violence” and “sexual assault.” It also includes provisions for “men, women, and youth in correctional and detention settings.”

One part that relates to transgender and LGB victims is the definition of “underserved populations.” There are grants for organizations working with underserved populations.

UNDERSERVED POPULATIONS.—The term “underserved populations” means populations who face barriers in accessing and using victim services, and includes populations underserved because of geographic location, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, underserved racial and ethnic populations, populations underserved because of special needs (such as language barriers, disabilities, alienage status, or age), and any other population determined to be underserved by the Attorney General or by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, as appropriate.

Another section expands the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to include support for the following:

developing, enlarging, or strengthening programs and projects to provide services and responses targeting male and female victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking, whose ability to access traditional services and responses is affected by their sexual orientation or gender identity, as defined in section 249(c) of title 4 18, United States Code

In section 249(c) of the hate crimes law is where we actually get a legal definition of “gender identity,” and it turns out to be very different from that given by organizations like GLAAD:

the term ‘gender identity’ means actual or perceived gender-related characteristics

This definition is much broader than the “internal sense” definitions, but does a better job of delineating the class of victims who are underserved, and who are often actually denied services when people perceive them as “queers” or “trannies,” with no knowledge of their internal sense of gender.

The people who refuse to investigate or prosecute crimes against transgender people don’t give a rat’s ass what internal, personal sense of gender those transgender people have. If I (or someone like me who’s black or Mexican) get bashed and a cop won’t write it up, telling the cop that I really don’t have an internal, personal sense that I’m a woman isn’t going to get me any better treatment. That’s probably why the definition in the hate crimes law didn’t reference a sense of gender, and why this expanded Violence Against Women Act doesn’t either.

A final note: in the spirit of the Delhi protesters who said “Don’t tell your daughters to stay at home, instead teach your sons to behave,” I like this program in the new Violence Against Women Act:

ENGAGING MEN AS LEADERS AND ROLE MODELS.—To develop, maintain or enhance programs that work with men to prevent domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking by helping men to serve as role models and social influencers of other men and youth at the individual, school, community or statewide levels.

What is transphobia?

grvsmth

You’ve all heard the Trans 101 definition: “irrational or persistent fears or non-acceptance towards people whose gender identity or expression differs from the gender they were assigned at birth. Transphobia can lead to direct or indirect discrimination or harassment in a variety of forms; the common theme is a misunderstanding of, or failure to respect, gender diversity.”

Are you ready for something more advanced – say, Trans 201? It’s all very well to declare that someone’s fears are irrational, and many of them sure are, but that doesn’t really tell us much about where they come from, so it doesn’t help us to stop it. We can only get true understanding through empathy and compassion. I count at least eight distinct reasons for someone to feel afraid of or hostile towards a transgender person. They all have different sources, and they all call for different responses. Lump them together at your peril.

  • Entitlement policing: the fear that someone is getting away with something they don’t deserve. This is behind bathroom anxiety and so much more. It’s even more intense if the self-appointed border guard believes that the transgender person in question needs to be made an example of, or else “they’ll all want one.”
  • Moral condemnation: the belief that transgender behavior is immoral and must be punished. Usually there is no reason given for this condemnation, it’s just written in a book somewhere.
  • Sissy discipline: the belief that “men” (particularly young ones) who refuse to accept male roles must be punished for shirking their duties.
  • Deception rage: anger based on a belief that someone has deceived you to gain something valuable from you, including but not limited to sexual gratification. This is a factor in many murders of transgender people.
  • Fear of unintended consequences: fear based on the belief that someone may be unintentionally putting themselves in danger, or making a choice they may regret.
  • Fear of shaming or retribution by association: the fear of being attacked for having loved, cared for or been intimate with a transgender person. This is a legitimate fear based on events such as the murder of Barry Winchell, Calpernia Addams’s boyfriend, in 1999. It is also a factor in murders of transgender people.
  • Fear of self-hatred: some people who are intimate with transgender people criticize themselves for it, especially if they believe that it means they are “gay.” They may further believe that killing their lover will somehow absolve them of “gayness” or demonstrate their rejection of it.
  • Fear of shaming or shunning of a transgender loved one, by others or even by oneself. Yes, some people attack their loved ones because they don’t want to feel obligated to attack them in the future. How messed up is that?

Do these make sense to you? Am I missing anything?

The Value of Being Out

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Tonight I came across this interview about GLB issues with Barack Obama, and one passage in particular resonated with me:

A college professor of mine helped me to see the lives of LGBT people from a different perspective. He was the first openly gay professor that I had ever come in contact with, or openly gay person of authority that I had come in contact with. And he was just a terrific guy.  His comfort in his own skin and the friendship we developed helped to educate me on a number of these issues.

I, too, had an experience like that: a fellow student of mine who was willing to tell anyone and everyone that he was gay.  Steve wasn’t an authority figure (although I would meet plenty later), but still an example of pride and self-acceptance who inspired me to reexamine and discard my homophobia.  I had known many closet cases and “don’t ask, don’t tell” gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, and their own shame and fear had given me license to judge them.  I just couldn’t do that with Steve, and after a while I realized that I couldn’t do it with myself either.

This is the reason why I think we non-transition-track transgender people (transvestites, cross-dressers, etc.) should practice some verbal hygiene on the term “out” and stop using it to describe someone who cross-dresses in public settings that are still anonymous, and who doesn’t disclose their transgenderism to their family, friends, neighbors or co-workers.  Of course there’s such a thing as too much information, but there are times when people need to know that we’re transgender.

Clearly our next president benefited from the information he got from his professor, and more importantly, from his professor’s own self-acceptance and self-respect.  The gay and lesbian communities have benefited from Obama’s acceptance and respect.  If transvestites ever hope to be accepted and respected, we have to accept and respect ourselves, and be out of the closet.  And this kind of “out” has very little to do with clothes: we can be out to our friends and neighbors without them ever seeing us in a skirt, wig or maid costume.  All it takes is these three words, “I’m a transvestite.”  Could you say them to Barack Obama?  Could you say them, with pride, to a student who might some day be president?

Update. August 2009: I just discovered that Steve’s husband died tragically in March.  Steve wrote for Americablog about how some of his experiences afterwards highlighted the connection between being out, marriage equality and respect.  Last week, he wrote about how it related to his lexicography work.

The first pregnant man?

grvsmth

Sometimes trans dogma can be funny when it paints itself into a corner.  Here’s an example from the current news about Thomas Beatie.  Beatie is a transman who just gave birth to a baby girl.  This Metafilter thread claims that he’s “first legally transgendered man to become pregnant.”  This is just one of the many Bogus Transgender Firsts.

Back in 2004 there was a transwoman who claimed to be the first transgender delegate to the Democratic National Convention.  A little googling revealed that there was a trans Carter delegate in 1976, and possibly a trans delegate to the 1968 convention.  Ever since then I’ve been skeptical about Transgender Firsts.  Some transpeople, despite paying lip service to the idea that transpeople have been around forever, seem to think that history began some time around 1998.

Metafilter user Grapefruitmoon managed to assert the notion that Beatie is the First Pregnant Transgendered Man even while linking to an article in the London Telegraph that contradicted this claim.  A little bit of thought suggests that this Transgender First is highly unlikely.

We know that people have been cross-dressing and cross-living for thousands of years, and expressing feelings that could broadly be considered transgender for about as long.  Many transgender people claim them as spiritual forefathers and foremothers, even though if Henri III were alive today they’d probably bounce him out of the support group for not taking hormones.  If you want to claim that the Abbé de Choisy or Billy Tipton were trans, you’d guess that there have been transmen for as long as there have been men.

In the essentialist point of view, transgenderism begins in the womb, if not in the genes.  Along these lines, if you accept someone as transgender they are eternally transgender, whether they’ve had any body modifications or not.  This is always a source of laughs when people who were “heterosexual cross-dressers” last week all of a sudden become eternally transgender, provoking a desperate flurry of revisionism.  More to the point, if you accept the notion of Eternal Transgenderism, not only was Beatie a man his entire life, but so was everyone who can be corralled into the Transmen Through History exhibit.

Reading through some of the lives of pre-testosterone-injection transmen, it seems that most of them began to live as men quite young.  A cursory search doesn’t turn up any record of any of them having been pregnant, but there are plenty of transmen who are attracted to men, and plenty of others who’ve tried to conform and live as women for part of their lives.  There are also, shamefully, transmen who’ve been raped.  Whether or not it was something he desired or intended, it seems pretty likely that some transman must have become pregnant some time in the past.

I’d even venture to say that Beatie is probably not the first transman married to a woman who can’t bear children.  I could imagine a transman who passed as a man for years, married a woman who knew his secret, and then found himself in a situation like Beatie’s.  I can imagine this transman conceiving a child in one way or another, arranging to go on a trip somewhere with his wife, living as a woman for long enough to deliver a healthy baby, and returning as a happy father and mother.

Just because I can imagine something doesn’t mean it happened, and I don’t know of any documented case of a transman becoming pregnant before Beatie.  Maybe it never happened, but it’s irresponsible to keep claiming “firsts” without making any attempt to actually check whether something is the first.  Beatie was quite likely the first pregnant transgender man to be featured on Oprah, but history was old before Oprah.

Grapefruitmoon could possibly get around this by using the phrase “legally transgendered man.”  But I don’t know of any legal certification for transgenderism.  There’s clinical diagnosis, but I don’t know if Beatie has one.  Beatie has legally changed his gender, but before the era of birth certificates it was possible to do that by simply passing for long enough to establish an identity.

There is a word for what Grapefruitmoon meant: “first known.”  This provides some protection, at least.

Be careful, you’ll put an eye out!

grvsmth

I just looked at this package in my cosmetics collection. It says,

Jean-Pierre Cosmetics
Eye & Make Up Remover
Cleansing Towelettes

It’s not a short-term glitch; that’s the official name of the product.

I had already used it when I noticed this, but I double-checked, and it didn’t remove any of my eyes. Whew! I guess it must actually be “face & eye make-up remover.”

Of course, I bought this stuff months ago. I knew exactly what it was when I bought it, and didn’t even notice the superficially-inaccurate description until a few minutes ago. Just goes to show that language communicates well even when it doesn’t follow the rules of logic.

Incidentally, it seems to be very effective at removing eye make-up without causing too much discomfort or drying my skin.  I’m satisfied.

Feelings or Actions, Condensed

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I recently came across an interesting blog post about the MTA’s weird practice of having its commuter railroad conductors mark the gender of passengers on their monthly passes. My friend Donna has experienced this on the Long Island Rail Road, and last week a blogger named Bobby posted his experience from the conductor’s point of view. I posted a comment to Bobby’s blog linking to Donna’s post, but I couldn’t help adding a correction to another comment by someone named Laser72.

Laser72 had tried to gently correct Bobby for referring to his passenger as a “cross dresser,” saying that since the passenger had a monthly pass, she probably spent a significant amount of time as a woman, and therefore “transgendered woman” was more appropriate.

A crossdresser is a man or woman who dresses up as the opposite gender on a more temporary basis, usually just for fun, or as a sexual fetish. A transgendered person is someone who dresses and lives as the other gender on a much more permanent basis, usually full time …

In response, I considered linking to my Feelings and Actions post, but I realized that that was way too in-depth and detailed for a casual blog reader to digest in one sitting.  I tried to write just a few sentences saying that I disagreed with Laser72’s categories, but Laser72 asked for clarification.  So now I’m trying to write something that’s shorter than the Feelings and Actions post, but still says enough.

The main problem with Laser72’s categories is that the terms don’t always mean those things.  They’re ambiguous, and that ambiguity causes problems.  For example, when people say that they’ve “always been transgendered,” they don’t mean that they’ve always dressed and lived as the other on a permanent or full-time basis.  They mean that there are particular feelings that they’ve always had, and it’s quite well documented that many people who say that they’ve “always been transgendered” have in the past dressed up as the opposite gender on a temporary basis, for fun or as a sexual fetish.   If these people have really always been transgendered, then it’s not just possible but common to be transgender and a cross-dresser.

The term “cross-dresser” is also problematic.  It was invented by people who cross-dressed but were uncomfortable with the term “transvestite,” which to them suggested cross-dressing just for fun, or as a sexual fetish, or even for prositution.  It was originally used to refer to anyone who dressed as “the opposite gender,” regardless of motivation.  Therefore, it could refer to transgender people, either before they start living full-time as their chosen gender, or when they dress as their birth gender temporarily, like Bobby’s passenger.

This is why I think it’s better to use terms like “transgender” and “fetish” for feelings and motivations, and terms like “cross-dresser” for actions.