I read a home journal the other day from a CDer who was convinced about the hormone wash theory to describe why we are the way we are. Of course he did not explain why he was so convinced. I personally think that the hormone wash theory is a cop-out and does nothing to explain ourselves. If we cannot work out our origins ourselves then what hope do we have in making others understand.
So below I have written some thoughts about why the hormone wash theory makes no sense and also I lay out my own theory which I think stands up to scrutiny. This post is a long one so please set aside 5 minutes of your time then I would be grateful if you can answer the poll as well as poke holes in my rationale. I do hope that many will agree with me though – I think it is a neat theory, maybe too neat.
Debunking the Hormone Wash Theory
I believe gender dsyphoria is a behavioral dysfunction and has nothing to do with the level of hormones foetesus are exposed to in the womb. Lets examine some facts first which would indicate that cross-dressing develops in the mind not the womb.
A baby does not develop a fully functioning brain while inside the womb, if it did then its head would be too large to pass down the birth canal. Instead babies are only born with the primitive brain parts necessary for survival. The important part of the brain, the cerebrum, is our learning center and this develops in babies after birth outside the womb. That is why babies are unable to do anything in the first year, they are waiting for the brain to grow so that they can begin learning.
Now gender is a human creation. Human society determines what characteristics are feminine, which are masculine. These are usually based on physical and practical measures. Creating gender rules was a useful tool in human evolution. By deciding the roles and behavior of the two sexes, society provided growing children with a framework that correlated with their physical characteristics and meant each person knew what was expected of them – both in behavioral terms and their roles in society. There was no need for each child to reinvent the wheel in determining how they should behave and fit into society, the answers were given to them in gender rules. Unfortunately this inevitably meant a loss in individuality.
Now a newly born baby has no concept of gender, it has no learning center to learn about it. The only hormones that the baby’s developing brain is exposed to are its own hormones inside its body. It has a basic personality such as being a loud or quiet baby but learning and experience form the subtleties of a human personality, and babies have neither. As the baby’s brain grows it begins to observe, correlate, dissect and label the information to make sense of the world. It is not until about age 3 that a baby becomes aware of gender rules and full comprehension of gender roles in society does not appear until about age 6.
Since children take years to learn and understand what gender is, how can a supposed hormone wash in the womb affect their appreciation and interpretation of gender which they have learned from observation using the brain cerebrum – the part of the brain did not exist inside the womb. It is impossible that the two events can be linked.
My Theory
So why are we crossdressers?
By age 6 we are forced to transition from babies into children. Our behavioral patterns must conform to gender roles which are reinforced by our exposure to the outside world through attending school. However many children will realize that their personalities and gender roles conflict in some areas – ie boys who do not like rough or aggressive behavior and want to stay with their loving, caring mothers. This occurs in many girls too – the so-called tomboy. In fact probably the majority of children do experience mild gender dysphoria between ages 6-10 as they try to align their personalities with the pressure from society to conform to their gender roles.
Most children resolve the conflict by abandoning those traits which are deemed inappropriate. The child realizes that it is not worth the effort to swim against the flow, going with the flow is much easier and there are benefits in conformity. In the child’s mind the undesirable traits are walled off , discarded and are never revisited again for the remainder of their lives. In essence gender conformity pushes children into killing off parts of their personality. Boys become afraid of being labeled a sissy and reject anything which has feminine overtures.
Crossdressers also agree to conform to gender roles and also build a wall around these undesirable traits in our own personalities. The difference is that we find a way to bypass the gender rules. We build a secret backdoor in the wall which allows us to slip into and out of the forbidden area on the other side of the wall. For male crossdressers this means once we pass through the backdoor we enter a world of pure femininity. We decide not to discard our feminine traits but keep them well hidden and only accessible privately. But to the outside world we appear as normal gender conforming boys.
Humans are visual creatures, men even more so than woman. The basis of femininity can be accessed through the image of a woman. When we wear female clothes, we are doing so to cloak ourselves in the very essence of everything that society determines to be female.
Crossdressing is the key or trigger that unlocks the secret backdoor in the wall that we built ourselves in our heads to fence off feminine characteristics and interests which society instructed us were taboo in our childhood. When we crossdress we are in fact entering an area of pure femininity and are reconnecting with our original whole self – the part that we did not reject as society instructed us to.
An analogy would be that non-CD people agreed to cut off their left arms to conform as children. Crossdressers only pretended to cut off our left arms. They are actually still attached, secretly tucked around our back. Our left arms are not readily accessible and can only be brought out in private. To bring out your left arm in public means incurring the wrath of society for only pretending to conform all of this time. Non CD people are confused and scared when they see someone with a left arm, these people broke the ground rules and are thus a threat to society’s stability. Non CD people find it difficult to understand why anybody would want to keep their left arm anyway.
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Originally Posted by Vickie-CD
May the Great Spirit Bless you in all things.
(um..she hasn't got here yet has she???....ok...I'm goin' back under the bus now....SAVE YOURSELF!!!)
Heavy, but good.
