Question - Does wanting to crossdress mean that I am gay?
Short answer: No, wanting to crossdress doesn't mean that you are gay. But you could be (and that is independent of your love for crossdressing).
I presume the definition of "gay" here is being sexually attracted to other men. There is quite a fair bit of fear among crossdressers that deep down, they are gay. This is likely due to how we have been brought up in society to shun that which is deemed not "normal".
For most of the crossdressers that I know, they generally view themselves as straight. They find no sexual attraction to the male form, and are turned on by women. However, the confusion arises when the crossdresser is attracted only to women when wearing men's clothes, but when crossdressed, he has adopted his female persona and is willing to participate / turned on by sexual activities with other men. Or perhaps the crossdresser finds other crossdressers a turn on, regardless of the genitalia (sometimes especially because of genitalia). Throw into the mix the recurring question of whether to transition or not, and you've got yourself a really confusing state of affairs.
I wrote a short post about the difference between "Gender Identity" and "Sexual Orientation", which are usually mixed up, and for good reason. These are non-binary, resulting in so many permutations (a sample list shown below). Our emotions and how society expects us to behave also tends to cloud our evaluation and cause us to conflate the two.
- Male ❤ Female = Heterosexual
- Male ❤ Male = Gay
- Crossdressed Male ❤ Female = Heterosexual? Or Lesbian?
- Crossdressed Male ❤ Male = Gay? Or Heterosexual?
- Crossdressed Male ❤ Crossdressed Male = Gay? Lesbian? Or Heterosexual?
- Crossdressed Male ❤ Transwoman* = Heterosexual?
(*To make it clear. Transwomen ARE women.)
My personal take is that you are likely to be bisexual if you are normally attracted to women, but are also willing to participate in sexual activities with men when crossdressed. Regardless, you shouldn't beat yourself up internally if you swing that way. Sexual tastes and preferences, as long as they aren't harmful to other people, should be more accepted (barring the truly bizarre ones...like *ahem* necrophilia). The good news about living in Singapore in this day and age, is that we can freely participate with members of the same sex (I won't go into the whole issue about gay sex being illegal in Singapore, due to a very archaic law from the colonial days that has yet to be repealed. That subject is very incendiary and there's a whole range of polarising views on the matter).
I'm not an expert on the topic, so do take what I write here with a pinch of salt. There are articles on this question which you can find on google, such as here and here. Reading more might give you a bit more clarity on the matter. I do find that this site called the Genderbread Person on the differences between "Gender Identity" and "Sexual Orientation" is much more illustrative and may help you pinpoint where you call on the spectrum for sexual orientation.
0 Comments