PEOPLE seem to believe what one wears determines who s/he is.

The spotlight on BB Gandanghari brings to fore just how much?or little?Filipinos understand about persons who elect to wear clothing of the opposite sex. BB Gandanghari has become either a subject of ridicule, entertainment fodder or champion of transgenders.

?What people don?t understand is not the transgender person but gender itself,? says Sass Rogando Sasot, 26, founding member of Society of Transsexual Women of the Phils. and an associate member of TransgenderASIA Research Centre.

?Gender is the earliest conditioning of any human being,? she explains. ?It?s the first thing the doctor declares upon your birth. It?s not whether you?re dead or alive but if you?re a girl or a boy. Gender is like religion, it?s given to us.?

The term transgender refers to individuals who are assigned gender at birth based on their genitalia, but who feel it?s an inaccurate identification of themselves, says Gary Canlas, a psychiatrist for 22 years.

Transgender is a general term used to include gender-identity labels such as ?transsexuals,? ?transvestites? and ?cross-dressers.?

People?s ignorance

While transsexual refers to an individual who has undergone sex-reassignment surgery, a cross-dresser is simply one who prefers to dress up like the opposite sex, says Canlas. It?s a habit that becomes a clinical problem only if, unfulfilled, it builds up anxiety in the individual.

?You must differentiate it from a transvestite, which is sometimes synonymous by definition,? Canlas qualifies.

For transvestites, he says, there?s a fetishistic desire to wear the clothing of the opposite sex. ?You feel sexually aroused.?

More often, cross-dressers are heterosexuals. ?That?s the difference with an ordinary homosexual who wants to dress up like a woman to attract a man. There?s motive. A cross-dresser has no motive.?

The public?s reception of BB Gandanghari?s coming-out, says Sasot, is ?an expression of [people?s] ignorance of what?s happening to her.?

Sasot?s being a transgender caused the longstanding riff between her and her family. ?I have no ill feelings toward them. People react to it based on what they know. They are informed to the extent of what they believe in.?

Not a disorder

Sasot adds: ?Our belief system is the root. We see people as divided, exclusive beings rather than as a continuous landscape. The process of framing people into different categories is so imbedded in our belief system. It has gone unchecked, so the oppression will go on.?

Cross-dressing itself isn?t strictly a disorder but a personality trait innate in the person, says Canlas. ?You?re born with it. It has always been there, ready to explode.?

Weighing in on BB Gandanghari?s case based on what he has seen and heard on TV, he believes the former matinee idol is ?just a homosexual who suppressed it for a very long time. We call that ?egodystonic.? You?re like a skeleton inside the closet. You hide, you displace, you use all sorts of defense mechanisms.

?When you can?t hold it in any longer, it becomes ?egosyntonic,? and you come out. And to make up for the lost time, you overcompensate. Remember, he grew up in a very macho household.?

Canlas advises family and friends of transgender persons to support instead of putting pressure and stress on the individual.

?The more they?re ridiculed, the more they get confused and disoriented,? he explains. ?They reach the peak of depression. Some become more prone to substance abuse. They can go into psychosis if the stress from society and family is too much. There?s pressure within themselves, plus the pressure from outside.?

Says Sasot: ?I just hope the media can handle it [BB Gandanghari case] in a very open, understanding, compassionate and non-sensationalized manner. I don?t think BB is trivializing the transgender issue. The issue has long been trivialized.?