It can be revered in pop culture. Yet it is often demonized in real life. Savannah Hauk knows this. She lives this, and yet, she shows great courage to be, to share her story, and educate others on the aspects of crossdressing.
What Is Crossdressing?
While crossdressing does fall under the LGBTQ umbrella, Hauk describes it as an art form.
“It is a way to present yourself in how you get from point A to point B, whether it’s male to female, female to male, something androgynous, in between, or however you scope that line between the masculine and feminine.”
A person can be gender queer, gender fluid, bi gender but Hauk considers herself dual gender. Crossdressing is the label she has accepted for herself but it’s not her gender. Her gender is part of the trans umbrella.
“The problem I think we’ve run into is sometimes there is an overarching transgender umbrella, and within that umbrella, there’s all of us. What happens is there is also a subset of transitioning folks. Sometimes the lines get very muddy in terms of self-labeling versus the culture and the community at large.
“Because they both share the same word, you call yourself a crossdresser and suddenly you’re way over here on the left side, because you’re not accepted as trans. We’re all trans. We’re all operating across genders. Anything operating cross gender is trans.”
Crossdressing is a label that has been misconstrued. Too much time is spent disparaging real people, but crossdressing is common on the screen and stage. Bugs Bunny, Tony Curtis in “Some Like It Hot,” glam rockers — these are the places where it is acceptable for a man to look like a beautiful woman and/or wear gobs of makeup.
Hauk’s goal is to demystify crossdressing. She does that in her podcast The Fox of Phoenix. It’s time to start separating and pulling apart the words so it doesn’t become another umbrella statement that allows people to get thrown into a box. Instead, assign meaning to it. Crossdressing doesn’t necessarily represent the trans experience other than the presentation of it.