Gender Diversity of a different degree

A week and a half ago, I was at the San Jose Coronation. I hung out with the usual crowd of Ally, Lisa, and Carol. During the evening, Ally and I talked a bit...especially about the crowd and our observations.

The two girls that won Co-Empress of San Jose are fairly femme. They look fabulous as seen in this photo, and, well, they seem to have a slightly different gender expression than your typical drag queen. There were also a few others in the crowd that showed slightly different drag qualities, and more regular femme qualities.

Ally called it gender diversity.

I like it. I mean, it seems like a person would be very secure with themselves to even present with gender diversity.

What is gender diversity? It's kinda hard to explain, but there are fairly distinct qualities to being a drag queen or a gay man. Drag queens in themselves have gender diversity, but there are some that do drag quite well such that the dramatized quality of it is almost absent, and a more femme quality is present. I suppose this could also be said of drag kings.

Anyway, this gender diversity deals more with a person expressing a security around different gender presentations.

As Ally and I conversed further, we talked about a number of people that expressed gender diversity. Most often, we noticed that there are some gay boys that show this quality. A few seem fairly comfortable and quite natural as women, but they are also quite comfortable being gay men. Well, they seem to be.

Perhaps it is a stage toward self acceptance, or perhaps it is just a variety of gender that does not need labels...other than to say some people are more gender diverse than others.