people

[kyukarate]

is the term transvestite applied to both sexes

[Count_Emmup]

Yes, the word means people who wear the clothes of the opposite sex. They don't like it, but according to the dictionary definition drag acts are transvestites.

[Quizmonster]

Count_Emmup's answer is, of course, strictly correct, but the word is almost invariably used to describe men. That's because women have been wearing what would in times past have been considered male attire for years.
None of us is surprised to see a woman wearing a shirt with jacket and trousers nowadays and when we do we do not consider that she might be a transvestite. On the other hand, a man in a skirt and high heels would be considered such straight away.

[Peter Pedant]

yes,
both sexes

Radclyffe Hall who wrote a girlie classic, The Well of Loneliness, is usually shown wearing men's clothes. She was a woman, by the way, kyukarate.
No one would call her normal. By saying this, I know I am risking being covered in chocolate and being thrown to the lesbians

and also Maggie Smith in Death on the Nile - doesnt she go through the whole film inmen's clothes ? Rather swish but even so not erm what you and I would do, if you get my meaning.

Yes definitely, both sexes.
Something to try at home, by the way.

I gave up putting on my sister's clothes at the age of eight.\ Passing phase, but I always WAS a precocious child.

PP

[fairkatrina]

Radclyffe Hall wasn't strictly a transvestite, she was a lesbian and a leading light in the drive into gender studies at the turn of the 20th century, and she believed that true female inverts (as masculinised lesbians were known) desire to resemble men, without actually being men.

Officially a transvestite is someone who feels a strong desire to dress in the clothes of the opposite gender, and transvestism is no indication of sexual orientation.

Transgendered people have traits of the opposite gender, and may well feel most comfortable in the clothing of the opposite gender, but they do not wish to physically become the opposite gender.

Transsexuals believe that they have been born into the wrong gender, and wish to change their bodies.