I'm a cisgender man and I have a strong desire to wear women's clothing during kink scenes but I have no interest in changing my gender identity. How do people who enjoy cross-dressing in kink understand it?

Cross-dressing in kink contexts can serve a range of psychological functions: feminisation as submission or humiliation, the sensory pleasure of specific fabrics and garments, gender play as an erotic framework, or simply the appeal of transgressing appearance norms in a safe and bounded context. None of these require a gender identity claim.

The wider culture sometimes treats cross-dressing as evidence of trans identity or suppressed gender non-conformity, but this conflation is not accurate to how many practitioners experience it. Gender identity, erotic interest in specific garments, and the use of gender-coded clothing in kink play are three distinct things that can overlap or exist entirely separately.

Many cisgender men have cross-dressed in kink contexts throughout their lives without any broader questioning of their gender identity. Others discover through that exploration that there is something more to explore. Still others find that the kink interest is specifically about the act in context and has no extension beyond it. The range of experiences is wide, and none of these outcomes is more valid than another.

In kink community contexts, cross-dressing, gender play, and feminisation are familiar and un-dramatic. The community has substantial experience with the range of ways these interests present and does not require participants to make identity statements based on their kink interests.

Your interest tells you something about your erotic imagination. What it tells you about your gender identity is something only you can determine through your own experience, and there is no pressure to determine it at all.