Gender identity

Crossdresser

Someone who wears the clothes their culture files under the other gender. It says what you do, not what you are.

Cross-dresserCrossdressingCross-dressing
Category
Expression
Pronouns
Any set
Read
6 min
Crossdressing is a way of presenting — what you wear — and not a gender identity; it says nothing on its own about whether you are a man, a woman or anything else.

Overview

What crossdresser means.

A crossdresser is someone who wears clothes their society assigns to a different gender. That is the whole definition. The word describes an action and stays silent about the reason, which is the point of it: comfort, play, performance, relief, desire, a Saturday. Wikipedia's entry puts it plainly — the term refers to a behaviour and implies no cause.

It is not a gender identity. Plenty of people who crossdress are settled in being men or women and dress otherwise some of the time. Nobody has counted them. Some are trans people who found this word first, on the way to another one. Some are neither and do not need a second word. Crossdressing is not the same as being transgender, and it is not the same as drag, which is crossdressing as a performance with an audience in mind.

One word to retire. "Transvestite" started as a medical label, was used to diagnose people for most of a century, and is now widely treated as outdated or insulting. A few people have reclaimed it for themselves; that is theirs to do. If you are describing someone else, use crossdresser.

A person who dresses in clothes associated with a gender other than their own; a practice, not a gender identity.

Crossdresser in one line

Origin

Where the word comes from

The behaviour long predates the word. The clinical term 'transvestite' was coined in 1910 by the German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, in his study Die Transvestiten, and used across the twentieth century as a diagnostic category — a usage that pathologised the people it described and, per Wikipedia, is now widely considered outdated or offensive. 'Crossdresser' emerged later, from within the trans and crossdressing community itself, as a plainer, non-clinical alternative that describes the practice of wearing clothes associated with another gender without implying a cause, a diagnosis, or a particular identity behind it. No single coiner or date for 'crossdresser' is documented; it is recorded as a community-driven replacement term rather than an individual coinage.

Signs people describe

Common experiences

None of these is a test. Most people recognise a few and shrug at the rest.

01

There is a bag, a drawer or a box that a specific set of people do not know about.

02

The first time you dressed fully, the feeling was relief, not thrill — like a held breath going out.

03

You are a man, and you have never doubted that, and you still needed the skirt.

04

You have researched shoe sizes, bra bands or shirt necks in a size chart that was not written for your body.

05

Somebody once asked if it meant you were trans, and you thought about it honestly and the answer was no.

06

Half the joy is the ritual — the shave, the hour in front of the mirror, the walk to the car — and half is simply being left alone in it.

07

You have a name for the dressed version of you, or you tried one and dropped it, and neither felt like a lie.

08

You have checked whether crossdressing is legal where you are travelling. Wikipedia keeps a section on that for a reason.

Pronouns

Pronouns

Crossdressing does not change anyone's pronouns. A man in a dress is he unless he says otherwise. Some people use a different name and pronouns while dressed — en femme or en homme, in the old club vocabulary — and switch back after. Ask if you are unsure, and do not assume the outfit has answered for them.

All pronoun sets →

Consider another path

This might not be your word if…

  • 1The clothes are the least of it and what you want is to be read, named and lived with as the other gender. That is a transition question, and the trans pages on this site are the place to start.
  • 2You only dress for an audience, in character, for a set. That is drag.
  • 3What you are describing is a woman in trousers or a man in a floral shirt. In most places today that is simply clothes.
  • 4You feel your gender itself move between dressing and not. That is a fluid question, not a wardrobe one — read Genderfluid.

Questions people ask

Frequently asked questions

Is a crossdresser transgender?+

Not by definition. Crossdressing describes what you wear; transgender describes who you are relative to what you were assigned at birth. Many crossdressers are cis men and women. Some trans people used the word before they had a better one. The two are separate questions, and only you answer the second.

Is crossdressing a mental illness?+

No. Wikipedia's entry records that the WHO's ICD-11, in force from 2022, removed the two transvestism diagnoses that its previous edition listed. The American DSM-5 still lists transvestic disorder, but only where cross-dressing for erotic purposes causes significant distress or impairment. Dressing, on its own, is not a diagnosis anywhere.

Is transvestite an offensive word?+

Usually, now. It began as a medical term in the early twentieth century and was used to pathologise people for decades. Wikipedia records that crossdresser is the term the trans community coined to replace it, and that some individuals have reclaimed transvestite for themselves. Use crossdresser for anyone who has not told you otherwise.

The flag

No page on lgbtqia.wiki (Crossdresser, Crossdressing, Cross-dresser all 404); gender.fandom.com is closed and nonbinary.wiki is blocked by a bot-check.

Sources

Still figuring things out?

Twenty questions, four minutes, and a few words worth trying on.

Take the gender test