I was combing the Internet trying to understand my own issues and I stumbled upon a possibly new explanation for at least some sexual identity issues. This theory explains the drive to cross dress in at least some people as the result of a fairly simple but typically hidden deficit in the way we recognize people. To me it seems very plausible and compelling, with possibly wide application. I'm not sure, but it seems that the community might not be aware of this idea yet, so I want to share it with you.
There is a condition called "Face Blindness" (or Prosopagnosia), where people cannot easily recognize human faces. It appears that normal people have a fast, automatic and unconscious brain mechanism that matches people with their facial image. When we see someone we've met before, most of us remember all sorts of information about them in less than a second just by looking at their face. But those with face blindness don't seem to have this automatic mechanism and rely on other means to recognize people. They consciously see the exact same facial features we all see, but human faces are too similar for that to help much without the automatic matching system evolved for face recognition. They typically take much longer to identify people, seven seconds or more, and they usually can identify only a few close acquaintances well.
Like anything else, people vary and people can suffer from face blindness to varying degrees. Personally, I have trouble recognizing even my wife or kids in a crowd. My wife often has to raise her hand when I'm looking in her direction or I'll walk past her.
Keep in mind that people with face blindness almost never know they have a neurological disability. They just know they sometimes have trouble remembering people and doesn't everyone? It's like color blindness - you cannot know about colors you've never seen.
Why this condition may be related to cross dressing behavior is subtle but very interesting. So bear with me while I explain.
When we cannot automatically recognize faces, we learn to use other methods to identify people. There are two alternative methods that can work pretty well, but only for recognizing some people. Most people with face blindness use one or both to some extent, though usually without knowing it.
One fairly good way to recognize some people is by looking at their hair, especially when they have long hair. Hair styles tend to vary much more than facial features, at least on a level we can consciously see. Plus we probably evolved from hominids with long hair, so it is possible that we have left over automatic "hair recognition" mental circuits that may work even if the facial recognition circuits do not. Somehow this method only works well for recognizing people who wear their hair long, which in many societies means women who do not pull their hair back.
The other good alternative recognition method involves sexual attraction. In addition to subconscious automatic facial recognition, we seem to have a separate subconscious automatic brain mechanism to identify people who are our sexual type, potential mates. When we are attracted to someone, something lights up in our brain in under a second, just as fast as normal people recognize faces. And when that "sexually attractive" light goes on, we can often recognize the person very quickly even without their facial image. But this method works only for people who are our "type", those who we see as potential sexual partners. If you are a heterosexual man, than means women. And not just any woman, but one who is your "type". Say long haired Caucasian women with bangs in my case (that being a reasonable description of my mother for you Freudians, by the way).
Here is where it gets tricky. It seems we all have an innate need to "see" ourselves. It's well known that "self identity" is important for psychological well being. To function socially, we need to understand where we fit in society. And to do that, we need a mental image of ourselves. It seems that somehow this mental self image requires the same circuits our brains use to remember and recognize other people. That makes some sense - why build a whole new self image mechanism when we already have image machinery for keeping track of other people?
But if you are face blind and heterosexual, you will have trouble "seeing" yourself. You are one of those people that you cannot easily recognize on an automatic subconscious level. That is, you would have trouble recognizing yourself unless you have long hair and/or look like an attractive member of the opposite sex, which means looking like a woman if you are male. So the theory is that some cross dressers and transgenderists may have some degree of face blindness and they have self identity problems unless they can see themselves as women.
There is reported evidence that more than 50% of people with face blindness have an ambiguous sexual identity, either being homosexual or adopting some sort of transgender like appearance, such cross dressing. I think that statistic makes this theory fairly plausible. It seems that most often people with face blindness set their sexual attraction "type" to include themselves and so are gay. But a minority somehow remain heterosexual and when they do, they usually have a strong drive to look like an attractive person of the opposite sex. I believe that face blindness, like other neurological conditions such as ADD and autism, may occur much more often in men, which may explain why cross dressing is primarily a male behavior.
A weakness of this theory is that face blindness is apparently pretty rare and cross dressing is apparently not so rare. Possibly it explains only a minority of cross dressers and other mechanisms come into play for the rest. However, we've only known about face blindness for less than twenty years and it is still not widely understood or diagnosed. So it may be more prevalent than we think. As I mentioned, it can be very difficult to recognize facial blindness in ourselves, especially when it is not a widely known condition, so most people with even severe face blindness are unaware of their deficit and difficult to find or count.
Plus people have a wide range of facial recognition abilities and it seems plausible that those with only a minor deficit, who can recognize people well enough most of the time, might still have self identity problems if they cannot "see" themselves quite as well as they would unconsciously like, given how vital self identity seems to be for our well being. So possibly some cross dressers and transgenderists, while not "face blind" are at least somewhat "near sighted" when it comes to recognizing themselves cloaked in their original sex.
Finally, some with completely normal face recognition ability might still seek the extra self identity recognition that comes from appearing as the opposite sex. They can recognize themselves as men, but as a woman the extra sexual attraction brain recognition would fire in addition to their facial recognition circuits, providing some kind of improved self image, a sort of double recognition that might work better for them than normal self recognition.
If the "brain sex" theory for transsexuality is correct, then self identity problems caused by face blindness would not enter the equation for most true transsexuals. But because transsexuality has come to be the dominant, accepted and popular explanation for extreme gender identity issues, and because there seem to be few good medical explanations for gender issues other than brain sex mismatch, I'd guess there may be many with a strong drive to present as the opposite sex who follow the transsexual crowd. Maybe self identity issues related to face blindness could provide the beginnings of a scientifically and medically acceptable explanation for serious transgender conditions without SRS.
This theory is not my own and is mostly derived from work on face blindness done by Bill Choisser, which you can read about at http://www.choisser.com/faceblind/ At that link is a free online book titled "Face Bind!" with lots of information on the condition. The parts on sexual "type" and its effects are buried in the middle of the book. Choisser himself is face blind, but his life followed what he calls the easier path, because he is gay (with long hair, by the way). He is probably correct that in our society it is often easier to be homosexual than to be obsessed with cross dressing, not that any of us makes a conscious choice.
In summary, this alternative theory explains cross dressing and transgender behavior in some people as the result of face blindness, because non-gay face blind people can often recognize attractive members of the opposite sex, especially with long hair, much better than they can recognize most people. This disability can mean it is easier for them to recognize themselves when they appear as attractive members of the opposite sex, leading to self identity issues that are relieved by cross dressing or becoming transgendered.
Originally Posted by Amy07
