“If you stretch the definition of ‘fetish’ to encompass every non-standard gender-related behaviour (i.e. any behaviour which is non-conforming to the heteronormative cisgender society we live in)”

All sexuality is fetishistic. Historically the term has been reserved to vaguely distinguish what is considered “deviant”. But there is no given or correct. There isn’t even a given way in which bodies are constructed within experience.

“I would also question your assumption that crossdressers are either drag queens of fetishists. I obviously have no idea on what your experience with crossdressers”

I am myself a masochistic emasculation fetishist. An “autogynephiliac”, a “crossdreamer”, a “crossdresser”, a “transvestic fetishist”, a “sissy”. Regarding the fetishist to his object of affection, he is sexually aroused by and may have also emotionally internalized it. He of course may speculate, as whether apart from his emotional internalization of fetishism, that may have been a psychological relationship to feminine prior to the fetishism, and even throughout the fetishism. Generally though this is not the case. The fetishist, who develops a emotional attachment towards his object of desire, it can be said is in love it. His resistance to accepting it’s nature is political. I do however believe that there is no correct way in which one can develop a relationship with gender and self-identify through it. That even sexuality can lead to truly profound and transformative psychologies.

If you stretch the definition of ‘fetish’ to encompass every non-standard gender-related behaviour (i.e. any behaviour which is non-conforming to the heteronormative cisgender society we live in), then you are right. However, I would argue that this would be stretching the point of what the word ‘fetish’ means, in psychological and sociological terms. To be more precise, the word ‘fetish’ is related to some sort of sexual attachment to either objects and behaviour; other kinds of attachment are, strictly speaking, not ‘fetishes’ (e.g. just because I love to wear red, it doesn’t mean that I have a fetish for that colour). Implying that all kinds of attachment are fetishes is really, really stretching the point… but if you slightly rephrase your sentence, saying that ‘crossdressing is an emotional attachment derived from social conditioning (in gender issues)’ then I would agree with you, at least to a degree. There is certainly an emotional attachment to crossdressing (for whatever reason). And crossdressing only ‘exists’ because our heteronormative cisgender society ‘imposes’ two gender roles with different expressions (in attire, in behaviour, in roles, and so forth).

Nevertheless, I would also question your assumption that crossdressers are either drag queens of fetishists. I obviously have no idea on what your experience with crossdressers is, and I can only provide my own anecdotal evidence: from around a hundred crossdressers, half of which I have physically met and talked to, there is a much, much wider spectrum and variety than those two extremes you point out. One problem with classifying ‘crossdressers’ is exactly that: people crossdress (fully or partially) for so many different reasons that it’s very hard to create a list of all possible types and reasons for crossdressing. I’m working on an article with a friend of mine who postulated a different classification type for crossdressers (I’ve still got a few revisions to make, based on his input) and hope to publish it soon. My friend has an even larger experience in contacting more crossdressers and has encountered a few more types and kinds of which I wasn’t even aware. So reducing all of that to just two types is really going to far. Simplification is important, yes, but you cannot fit every kind of crossdresser in just two types. My friend is suggesting five different types — based on his sample — with a few extra subtypes thrown in, and he claims that, at least for his sample, those types are sufficient. Certainly the fetishist is one of those types, but it’s not the only one. All I can ask you is to be a little more patient until I do my last reviews of that article and post it — hopefully in the next few days 🙂 I’ll be very interested in your comments. Thanks!

In all seriousness, a crossdresser is either going to be a hyper feminine homosexual drag queen stereotype, or a fetishist (including the commonly affiliated potential emotional attachments).