The more I think about it, the less I realise I know and understand about gender. I’m fine with the basic principal: gender is a social construct which needs to be reread; it is a artificial barrier to be crossed. That’s fine with me, and I’ve been doing that myself, on and off, for a while. Yet when you go beyond that starting point, things get kind of hazy. For starters, some might say this form of nonconformity is itself a form of conformity, inasmuch as I’m sticking to the standard dress code of ‘men’ and ‘women’. It’s also still something of an event for me; something I do every few days for a bit of relaxation or fun. I’m still predominantly a guy; I still conform to the social construction of manhood most of the time. Other people go far beyond this, politicising it into areas I don’t really understand, to be honest. That, I must admit, sort of worries me: am I pretending to be something I’m not, playing in an area I ought not to be? Yet, time and again, everyone in this area faces that same contradiction: how does one reread a gender binary without automatically adhering to one gender or the other? Even if one fully transitions from one gender to the other, is that not still a type of gender conformity? (It’s not that simple, of course – transpeople don’t transition just to make a political statement). Others have postulated a creation of a third gender; but even then the features of any such gender will inevitably be set down in relation to the other two. The question I find myself asking is, how do we escape a naturally occurring binary? But to say it is natural contradicts the assumption that gender is a social construct. The more I think about gender, the more lost I get an the less I realise I understand. At the same time, I think the ‘each to their own’ principal applies: I may not understand gender, nor why I like dressing up. I just do, and if by doing so I add to the infinite diversity of humanity, then that must surely be all to the good. I am who I am, whether I’m in trousers or my pink tutu; and what applies to me of course applies to anyone else. Whether you call me a man or a woman does not matter – they are just labels, as superficial as any other.