Here's a thing that's been bugging me:
We've got male, female, and a whole supply of alternative gender identities (typically grouped under the umbrella of androgyne).
We've got gay (male and female, the latter often designed "lesbian" since gay disproportionately represents male), heterosexual, bisexual, and pansexual. Even more, we have the framings of androphile and gynephile for those who don't like defining their attractions off the interplay of their own gender with a target gender or whose gender identity falls outside the gender binary (and I'm inclined to favor those terms anyway because they're more versatile), although these are still compatible with bisexual (androphile + gynephile together) and pansexual. These terms aren't perfect, but we have a way to name heterosexuals.
We've got Black, White, Asian, and sometimes others to designate race, and we have Hispanic and others to (sort of) designate ethnicity.
Even more to the topic, there are cisvestites as a tongue-in-cheek counterpart for ->-bleeped-<-s, the former being a word that undermines the invective often intended when someone uses the latter. Sometimes homovestite or homeovestite are used, but Wikipedia's discussion on isomers really makes a strong case for cis- and trans- as natural counterparts: 'The terms cis and trans are from Latin, in which cis means "on the same side" and trans means "on the other side" or "across".' By similar reasoning, everyone is either a "->-bleeped-<-" or a "cissy" (and yes, the latter is pronounced the same as "sissy").
While there is a great deal of invisibility that comes with being white, male, or heterosexual, we at least possess words that allow us to name those identities. They possess the advantage of not being the "other," but we at least possess the language of speaking to that point.
I'm stuck when it comes to crossdress/crossdressing/crossdresser. Cisvestite is not a true counterpart. Cross-pollination and self-pollination does not provide a suitable answer, because the use of self- does nothing to imply a gender-related discussion. Crossroads (in both senses), crosswords, and cross-sectional studies don't seem to have suitable counterpart names. I feel like there's something I'm missing, but it seems like "cross" is rigged to be an "other" word, so maybe some outside-the-box thinking (and outside the root word approach) can pay off here.
I say this at the same time that I feel that crossdress, crossdressing, and crossdresser are silly words. Whether they are invoked/invokable depends on the surrounding culture (whose expectations change over time). They are entrenched in the gender binary. For all the baggage and meaning attached to crossdress/crossdressing/crossdresser, the utility of the words is no better than for the words dig/digging/digger or yell/yelling/yeller. Granted, we do assign deeper meaning to teach/teaching/teacher and paint/painting/painter, but these two are examples I feel pertain to *roles*, and digging/yelling/crossdressing don't pertain to roles in the same sense.
Nevertheless, we need a word to go opposite of crossdress to help bring balance to the world. Any ideas?
