One need not look to the sexual practices of other cultures to find sexual practices that deviate from what the traditional perspective defines as normal. Transgenderists provide a particularly good example. Transgender is a term used to describe individuals who challenge the categories of sex and gender in a variety of ways. Transgenderists are men who present social identities as women and include transsexuals, transvestites, cross-dressing male prostitutes, drag queens, and female impersonators. Inquiries into these men’s motives, investment in their gender role, their audiences, and frequency of behavior provide dramatic challenges to traditional assumptions regarding the natural cooccurrence of biological sex, gender identity, and behavioral expressions of sexuality (Gagne & Tewksbury, 1996; Tewksbury & Gagne, 1994).
The study of these persons reveals the possibilities for the independence of one’s biological sex, gender identity, and socially presented gender. For example, evidence suggests that many male cross-dressers are heterosexual (Hirschfeld & Lombardi-Nash, 1991; Peo, 1988), although much of this behavior occurs in private because of the social stigmatization men accrue when publicly adopting “feminine” behaviors. Furthermore, researchers also suggest that contrary to the stereotypes, cross-dressing is not necessarily erotically motivated (Bullough &. Bullough, 1993). Marjorie Garber’s (1992) analyses show how cross-dressing has existed within a heterosexual population for centuries, and has influenced culture in a number of significant ways, in the arts in particular. Cross-dressing also may permit men to engage in behaviors that the “masculine” otherwise prohibits, such as more open emotional displays, elaborate use of clothing and jewelry, and engaging in domestic activities. Unfortunately, the price they pay, relative to the dominant culture’s values, is that observers hold their sexuality suspect, and assume they are gay. Although transgenderists demonstrate the distinctions among biological sex, gender, and sexuality, a common cultural response is to fuse these together and label any deviation from the socially prescribed norm as homosexual.