What Caused You to Become a Crossdresser?

[Seana Summer]

- Dominant females who berated males in your life,
- Bullies who physically and psychologically tormented you,
- A sensitive boy who wanted his mother's approval,

These seem to ring true for me and have been among the things I have considered in the past as explanation as to what got me started. I am among those who started very young, too young for it to have been a sexual thing

It is also interesting to note that over the years I have typically had strong GG S.O.s . Hmmmm..... Could it be that boys are attracted to girls that remind them of their mothers?? and vice verse? women are attracted to men who remind them of their fathers??? Maybe this is why it may seem genetic??

[Rhonda Jean]

I could control it, if I wanted to, but I am not interested in it. I do proudly flaunt my desires. As I see nothing wrong with them.

I am not a believer that I have to act anyway at all, because I feel it. I choose to act the way I want to.

I don't think I can control my desires, but I do think I can control my actions. If I choose to ignore my desires it will probably affect lots of things and throw me into a bit of an emotional hell, but just because I desire something does not mean I have to act on it.

An unpopular answer that I agree with entirely. Well said, Nadine. Sorry Paula, my friend. This isn't an indictment on you.

I find something very interesting in the contrast between Nadine and Paula, though. Y'all correct me if I'm wrong.

Paula's wife was diametrically opposed to any sort of cross gender behavior. Nadine's wife is so incredibly supportive of it that she refers to Nadine as her wife! Look at her website. It's awesome!

An interesting dichotomy at the very least.

[PaulaQ]

@lilsissystevie - the body dysphoria you describe is one of the primary symptoms of GD that I have. You just have a milder version of it, I expect. If you think that I'm any less influenced by an idealized female body than any CD, you are just mistaken. In my case, I've hated my male body for my entire life. I preferred death to the hell I lived in, trapped in this body. It's simply all wrong.

[Tami Monroe]

I truly believe that at a young age, I felt feminine urges, therefore THAT made me want to CD. I mean, literally, during the 1972 Olympics, as a toddler, I identified myself with the women's gymnists. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I have memories of my life all the way back to my crib.

[suchacutie]

Everything we do is buried in the brain's biochemistry. How that biochemistry came to be could be debated forever, but there it is. There is no way around it. Even with outside stimuli, the brain must lock onto it. It's all in our heads waiting to be let out.

In my case, "it" didn't find its way out for 55 years! Then within 48 hours my wife and I found Tina, were completely amazed, and are still having a terrific time exploring who she is. Just today, not quite 9 years later, we had an hour's discussion about some new aspects of what Tina might be!

It is incredibly exciting to learn about who each of us is. Once we start down that path, once we know what is there buried in our biochemistry, there is a compulsion that, in retrospect, seems completely natural!!!

On August 20, 2005, my world changed. We lead incredible lives!

[Michelle789]

I asked my therapist about cross-dressing and autoeroticism. She is an expert on both gender and human sexuality. She told me a few things that are shocking.

1. Cross-dressers are female identified, with gender dysphoria that is less progressed than a transsexual, and that CDers don't hate their maleness or even enjoy being male, but they are female, while a transsexual typically cannot endure much more time playing male, because the GD has progressed so far.

2. What you do in private is who you really are. If you CD in private, than you are really female identified. If you fantasize about being a woman when masturbating, then you are really female identified.

3. Most CDers don't transition because the GD hasn't progressed far enough to warrant it. They love their wives, love having sex with their wives, don't hate their penises or beards, and feel they have too much to lose trying to transition, and yes it's true that you have a lot to lose. Many CDers who stay in the closet and don't venture out the house en femme for the same reasons, fearing too much to lose plus transphobia.

4. A CDer is essentially female identified with a partial male persona, rather than male identified with a partial female persona.

[Tinkerbell-GG]

Michelle, maybe your therapist is right, but I'll say this - if my H is female identified, he's annoyingly male about it! And not in an 'I'm hiding my true feminine self' way - in an annoying doesn't listen, needs-a-man-cave, can't listen, refuses to talk about anything, will never listen, stubborn, clueless, fix-everything, obsessive, competitive male sort of way!! (Yes, I just used every cliche in the book but dammit, gender IS a cliche) If there was anything even remotely feminine about my H's internal workings I sure haven't experienced it yet. Believe me, I've looked! I've looked so hard I literally cried when I couldn't find it because there has to be SOME benefit to living with all this. But hey, he can cook, clean, wave his hands around and walk in heels. I guess that makes him one of us.

Can I join the third gender please? Because this one's getting awfully crowded.

[Claire Cook]

I think Rodgers and Hammerstein said it best for me :

"Who can explain it, who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons, wise men never try...."

I'm just happy to accept who I am.

[MissTee]

Not sure I'll ever know, and at this point in my life I don't care. I am in a loving and supportive relationship, and I feel fulfilled. Dressing is only a very small part of who I am and what I appreciate in life. I focus on that.

[Andrea Renea]

Don't know, don't care. Just know I've enjoyed and been doing it for close to 50 years.

[Jorja]

I thank God every day that I am not a crossdresser and have to try to answer this question. Now if he would give up a few answers on why I needed to be a girl.....

[Ressie]

I asked my therapist about cross-dressing and autoeroticism. She is an expert on both gender and human sexuality. She told me a few things that are shocking.

1. Cross-dressers are female identified, with gender dysphoria that is less progressed than a transsexual, and that CDers don't hate their maleness or even enjoy being male, but they are female, while a transsexual typically cannot endure much more time playing male, because the GD has progressed so far.

2. What you do in private is who you really are. If you CD in private, than you are really female identified. If you fantasize about being a woman when masturbating, then you are really female identified.

3. Most CDers don't transition because the GD hasn't progressed far enough to warrant it. They love their wives, love having sex with their wives, don't hate their penises or beards, and feel they have too much to lose trying to transition, and yes it's true that you have a lot to lose. Many CDers who stay in the closet and don't venture out the house en femme for the same reasons, fearing too much to lose plus transphobia.

4. A CDer is essentially female identified with a partial male persona, rather than male identified with a partial female persona.

If all this is true it explains a lot. It all makes sense to me. But I hate my beard!

[sometimes_miss]

I asked my therapist about cross-dressing and autoeroticism. She is an expert on both gender and human sexuality. She told me a few things that are shocking.

Michelle, if your therapist is telling you what is generally believed by current experts, then we are all in a great deal of trouble. The missing information and inaccuracy is staggering; it sounds like she gave you the most simplistic explanation she could come up with; the kind of 'Because I said so' explanation that parents give little children.

Now then, my experience. Sexually abused as a child after starting primary school, I was told that god had made a mistake, and that I was really supposed to be a girl. Over the years, the concept was frequently reinforced that I should learn how to be a girl, so I would be prepared when god fixed me. Spending most of my childhood believing I was a girl, the idea 'took', and became a permanent part of my personality. I really believed through all those years that when I reached the age when girl's bodies changed, it would happen to me too. When I went through almost my entire high school age before puberty arrived, I was almost certain, and when my secondary male sex characteristics started coming in, it made me even more confused, as I was sure god had forgotten all about me. I can't say for sure, but I believe that certain things in our personality become permanent at certain ages, and I believe that gender identity is one of them; I think it occurs somewhere in the range of puberty years, but will never be sure. However, the feeling that I'm a girl, and should be wearing female clothes and behaving as a female, has been present in the back of my mind ever since, so after 50 years I don't think it's ever going to go away. For those who believe it was there since birth, well until I was told this, I had always felt and behaved as a normal boy.

One of the biggest problems we have with modern psychology, is that as part of a scientific world, theorists search for the one, true cause for the disease state. after all, they've narrowed down the causes for virtually all physical and mental diseases to infectious, chemical or simply a case of the parts wearing out. So everyone just assumes that GID will eventually wind up being the same thing. However, from reading case studies and first hand experiences, everything points to a variety of causes, because it's clear that our experiences are so different, and occur at such a great spread of physical ages. The single commonality among western mtf gid, is the effect that social stigma of expressing any female behavior has on us, and the embarrasment and/or shame many of us feel when we are 'caught' trying to be the females we have the urge to be; and those feelings, unfortunately, often suppress rational thinking as well as memories that could have helped us figure ourselves out. So many of us don't want to know the cause, lest we somehow be responsible for any of it, because for a boy to want to be a girl, we are told throughout our lives, is the absolute worst thing he can be. Effeminate boys are ridiculed, sissies are outcasts, every 'real male' group uses feminine pronouns as insults to other males. So it will be extremely hard to learn the causes, because even scientific members don't really want to learn the truth, that their own scientific method as always used before, simply won't work this time around, because there is no ONE answer to be found.

[PaulaQ]

So everyone just assumes that GID will eventually wind up being the same thing.

1. That's completely incorrect, Lexi. The current scientific thinking does not assume all CD's will transition - far from it.
2. Consider that you are possibly kind of a statistical outlier.

[Katey888]

I asked my therapist about cross-dressing and autoeroticism. She is an expert on both gender and human sexuality. She told me a few things that are shocking....

4. A CDer is essentially female identified with a partial male persona, rather than male identified with a partial female persona.

Fascinating stuff! And perhaps a little hard to swallow totally... this might be a very well-educated opinion but I don't believe there is anything truly that concrete about GD..?

I also can't believe that this is still so binary? If there is so much flexibility with being able to accommodate until this hits a point at which TS is the right definition (and way forward) doesn't this also mean that if CDers were truly female identified, we wouldn't be able to just dress 3 or 4 hours a month (which was me last month, but I'd rather it were more.... Oh - hang on... ) without suffering real angst about not expressing more? I still think there's more a mix of gender identities and a broad band - say in the beyond 60% 'female' category, where there is more comfort gained in considering transition... I think also it's just not as simple as that, but it's certainly not binary...

Interesting though!

Katey x

[Samantha_Smile]

I don't think anything ever caused me to crossdress.

My mum did reveal to me early on in life (years before I first 'borrowed' her clothes) that when I was a baby up to the age of 2 she would dress me in girls clothes.
Not to take me out in or anything like that, but she used to knit and sew clothes for my female cousins, and she needed a willing mannequin of the same size.
That's where I came in LOL.
I still don't remember any of this, even to this day.

In terms of when I started to realise I liked it?
Well my dad was always around, so it wasn't for lack of a male role model.
But there are myriad theories, loner kid, bullied, never had a GF until I was 17 (started age 13), the kids in my street were mainly girls so we would play together a lot.
I dunno, I just kinda wondered what it felt like to wear the clothes that girls and women wear.
One try and I was hooked.

[ReineD]

I asked my therapist about cross-dressing and autoeroticism. She is an expert on both gender and human sexuality. She told me a few things that are shocking.

Has your therapist read this new textbook (2013) for LGBT therapists?

http://www.amazon.com/Counseling-LGB.../dp/1412987180

Here's the full chapter on crossdressers. It includes citations to major studies done in the area. You will see there are different theories.

http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/47510_ch_7.pdf

1. Cross-dressers are female identified, with gender dysphoria that is less progressed than a transsexual, and that CDers don't hate their maleness or even enjoy being male, but they are female, while a transsexual typically cannot endure much more time playing male, because the GD has progressed so far.

By definition, crossdressers are male identified or gender-nonconforming (gender-fluid if you will). Else they would not be crossdressers, they would be female-identified transsexuals.

2. What you do in private is who you really are. If you CD in private, than you are really female identified. If you fantasize about being a woman when masturbating, then you are really female identified.

This is not true, if you look at the vast population of male-identified CD fetishists or CD non-fetishists, who do CD in private and who are not in the least bit interested in identifying as a woman. Read some of the threads in this very forum about this, and also do a google search of CD + sex and have a look at the millions of websites that cater to the fetishists, far more than there are support websites for the CDers.

3. Most CDers don't transition because the GD hasn't progressed far enough to warrant it. They love their wives, love having sex with their wives, don't hate their penises or beards, and feel they have too much to lose trying to transition, and yes it's true that you have a lot to lose. Many CDers who stay in the closet and don't venture out the house en femme for the same reasons, fearing too much to lose plus transphobia.

They do not transition precisely because they do not hate their male sexual characteristics. They would not be happy living as women full time nor would they be happy without their male sexual functioning. I think it's a mistake to paint all CDers as men who float in the breeze according to societal mores and who don't transition because they fear losing their families and risk being stigmatized. The simplest explanation is that they are exactly where they want to be, even though the fantasy of living life as a woman is tantalizing.

4. A CDer is essentially female identified with a partial male persona, rather than male identified with a partial female persona.

I suppose there are arguments for both sides of this debate. But please read the link above together with all the threads we've had here by members who do not identify as women. There is a difference between transsexualism and gender-nonconformity (and just plain old crossdressing) and it's more than having various degrees of gender dysphoria.

BTW - transitioned TSs will tell you it was not technically gender dysphoria they had (they actually were quite clear what gender they are), it was more a question of being dysphoric with their bodies (their sex).

I believe there are however, (although this is difficult to measure), gender-nonconformists who either do not know if they are, or would rather think themselves as transsexual. I think it takes time for many people to navigate through this most difficult determination and in the end, there are those who will discover they are TS, while others will discover they are not.

And last, there are therapists (not all of them) who do have tunnel vision possibly because of their limited exposure and/or their own personal bias. Some of these therapists believe that everyone who dresses must have GD, while others believe that everyone must be inherently fetishistic. The truth is, there are TSs, there are fetishists, and there is everyone in between including those who have partial GD and those who have not.

I think it would be helpful to seek a therapist who has successfully counseled a healthy mix of both TSs and CDs.

[Cheryl T]

What "Caused" it??
Genetics for sure!!!

My explanation...
My father had 2 brothers. All 3 were married to unrelated women. Between them, in my generation there are 4 male children. Of these 4 I crossdress and my 3 cousins are all gay. We were all brought up in separate homes and are slightly different in ages, enough so that we did not have the same experiences growing up.
I see no other explanation besides Genetics!!

[almalove]

I've done a lot of reading and research about homosexuality, gender, crossdressing, bi, les, and at the end of the day, I'm just about in the same place I started, it seems that there's not one factor alone, or one predetermine reaction, there is psychological, genetical, psychoanalytic and sociological factors, then there are the reactions, that are not the same for all persons, that why we have gays,trans, bis, crossdressers, lesbi and some conbinations, For me at times I'm more confused then at the beganing, but this is what I know about me, hetero,cross dresser, I have tried to stop but we all know where that ends, so today I take one day at a time enjoying life as much as possible with what I'm, good luck

[sometimes_miss]

1. That's completely incorrect, Lexi. The current scientific thinking does not assume all CD's will transition - far from it.
2. Consider that you are possibly kind of a statistical outlier.

Not the end result; the cause.

[tryingtoblossom]

I personally have no reason. I remember from a young age (about 4) i would pull the neighbors female laundry off the line and wear it. And have been doing it ever since. I have no problems with my manhood at all I just enjoy dressing as a woman seeing how the other half lives. The women always seem to have better everything that guys. I was a top sportsman even was in the military for a number of years. The only people who really know of my fondness for CD my mum and dad. Having said that I only a few years ago found out my father was a CD.

[franlee]

Absolutely NOTHING caused me to "become" a crossdresser.

It is just who I am.

I agree with the addition of, "it is what I wanted to do."

[drushin703]

I don't know exactly..But I do remember that Mom's favorite girdle, much to her surprise, also turned out to be my
favorite girdle. The rest, as they say, is just optokinetics....dana

[tina99]

I was born transgender (i.e. with Gender Dysphoria), and knew it from a very early age. I am TS.

__________________________________________________ _____
A lot can be learned about Transgender people from Intersex people.

For more on this, see Lynn Conway's page entitled
"Basic TG/TS/IS Information" at
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TS.html .

Lynn Conway's home page is at www.LynnConway.com .
She is transsexual, and is a very successful Computer Scientist and Engineer.

Her site is one of the largest TG sites on the web.

[celeste26]

"Xenoestrogens are a type of xenohormone that imitates estrogen. They can be either synthetic or natural chemical compounds. Synthetic xenoestrogens are widely used industrial compounds, such as PCBs, BPA and phthalates, which have estrogenic effects on a living organism even though they differ chemically from the estrogenic substances produced internally by the endocrine system of any organism. Natural xenoestrogens include phytoestrogens which are plant-derived xenoestrogens. Because the primary route of exposure to these compounds is by consumption of phytoestrogenic plants, they are sometimes called "dietary estrogens". Mycoestrogens, estrogenic substances from fungi, are another type of xenoestrogen that are also considered mycotoxins."

Chemicals like those cross into the womb and wash the fetus causing feminization in utero, they wont change the genetic code but they will effect the gender expression. One well known chemical was DES given to women who were suspected they might have premature delivery, that chemical is well established as causing intersexed conditions.

All of the arguments for a "nuture cause" for being CD have plenty of evidence to offer counter evidence against them.