eonism

Whereas Ruskin still depends on stereotypes in his redefinition of gender roles, Havelock Ellis's work certainly disrupts the rigidity of the binaries by focusing his attention on a wide range of sexual practices which run from "eonism" (cross-dressing) to homosexuality.

(The Chevalier D'Eon, an 18th- century French diplomat and spy who lived most of his life as a woman, became so celebrated that "eonism" was an early term for transsexualism.) In other cultures, such as those Native American and Middle Eastern tribal societies where the masculine warrior ideal is taken to an extreme, transgenderism seems to serve as a socially sanctioned escape valve for people who don't want to compete.