Nature or nurture or either

[Stephenie]

So do you feel that you are a CD because of the ways you were raised or due to some thing that happened in youth or because of genetics. I feel that either casa can be valid.
I myself am starting to think that in my case it is either genetic or other developmentally related mutation. As long back as I remember I have felt different than how I precieved I was expected to. I am happy being male but I have feelings that I have suppressed/repressed that are more female than male. In tests for male/female brain type I consitantly score as both/either type, niether fully male or female.
What do you gals think.

[Kimberly]

What they call "gender identity disorder" in psychologist terms is not nurture. From an incredibly early age, children display, independantly, opposite gender behaviour, and this cannot be explained through the nurture factor.

I read somewhere that biologists believe the gender of the brain may be affected by the amount of eostrogen and testostirone in the foetus. Personally, I don't know what it is: but I know my experiences aren't due to nurture - my CDing is independant of my parent's bringing me up as a girl or something like that...

Just my thoughts...

[Niya W]

for me it was once I turned 12, star puberty, Things just were diffrent for me then

[Deelite]

Yup, i think it's genetics, although my mum did tell me she used to dress me in tights when i was a baby, if only she knew now!!!

Dee.

[Wendy me]

i realy don't know but who ever or what ever i would like to know so as i could send them a thankyou card......

[Felicity]

I think it is developed rather than genetic, but it is a thought with no basis other than personal experience.

For me, my parents divorced when I was 12 and I had no strong male figure in my life since. I cross dressed prior to that, however, I remember things like “Isn’t that loveley” or “How Beautiful” when we were shopping for my sisters, and no types of complements or praise for boys clothing. The clothing praise thing is what strikes me the most.

[gender_blender]

Nature most definitely.

Dispite my parents' ernest yet fulite attempts to prevent my cross gender expression, I still turned out to be a crossdresser.


Charlie

[DonnaT]

Mostly nature, i.e., genetic, but I'm sure there's a tiny bit of nurture in there somewhere.

Being raised with 4 brothers, and being the only known CD in the bunch, it's clearly not all nurture for me :)

[Clare]

Most definately a genetic efffect!

I always had these femininine tendancies ever since i was a young child.

My parents were great and gave me a wonderful upbringing. My mum never dressed or treated me as a girl and I was encouraged to do my thing as any normal little boy would.

My cd expression was always inherent within my own being and it was not caused by the influences of nurture - it is a nature thing with me without doubt.

Christine.

[Zoey]

I think it's some combination of the two. I was very close to my Mom and my Grandmother when I was little. My Dad wasn't around very much, and didn't spend much time with me when he was home. I tried hard to get his attention. There were no other males around me. My Mom raised me pretty much on her own. I think this had an affect on me. On the other hand, I've always had strong personality traits that are considered more feminine. When I started school, it seemed to me that I thought more like how girls did than other boys. I've taken a couple of brain gender tests and I also score in the middle or just slightly more female.

[karen marie]

i really feel its different for each of us.there has to be some strong
genetics involved,otherwise all of us would have very similar experiences.
in my case,i always identifed with my mom.she really encouraged my
cding,but it's what i wanted.those feelings were always there.
karen.

[Imogen_Mann]

I started dressing at 4 yrs of age, even a mother as mad as mind hadn't had much influence on me by then. Shame nature decided I'd get the 6Ft 2in 17 Stone (uk) body as well as the urge to dress.... Oh well, life's a bitch.
I'm not discounting parental influence here, I remember feeling resentment towards my sister, always the centre of attraction because she was severely ill... I think I was looking for some attention for myself and thought being a girl was the way to go. when I got sick, and finally got some attention I just went OTT on the attention seeking and dressed the part too. The more I think about it the more I understand.

[Stephenie]

I don't remember dressing up in front of my parents and don't think my dad would have gone for it. I think that since there is a biological part of gender is the brain structure that ther has to be some part of us that was made female in the brain. Some more than others. There is even a medical term for it if you are female with male tendancies do to hormonal problems in the womb. But not for us.

Stephenie

[Clare]

BTW, did you know that all fetus' in the womb start out as female?

The early stage fetus only changes to male after that cursed 'Y' chromosome starts to asset itself in the devolping fetus.

Maybe some of the 'XX' stuff is left in the brain's chemical composition and that is why we are inclined to follow the 'nature' orientation of crossdressing?

I don't know - one of many possibilities I guess!

Christine

[Lady Jayne]

BTW, did you know that all fetus' in the womb start out as female?

The early stage fetus only changes to male after that cursed 'Y' chromosome starts to asset itself in the devolping fetus.

That's true although the Y chromosone is only activated if certain Hormones are present at a particuar stage of the fetus's development, it would therfore make sense that the concentration of those hormones could/would have an effect on the degree of masculine development, this would explain the varying degrees of masculinity from hermaphrodites(born with male and female genitils) through Transsexuals on to the ultra butch macho type.

I remember seeing a programe about a dutch scientist who found there is a partucular section in the brain that is larger and more developed in females and undeveloped(almost dormant) in males, when he studied the brains of dead transexuals, both pre-opp and post opp he found that this same section was much more developed than in a normal male but about half the size of that of a female,however due to the rarity of pre adolesent transexual brains to study he wasn't able to prove whether or not this difference was present from birth.

[Elysia]

I think both nature and nurture play a role in our gender identification. However, I find the nurture side of the equation most interesting because we can change how we think. Clearly, if gender identification were simply a matter of physical biology no one would have gender identification issues; we are all perfectly aware of what body type we have. Gender identification is all about feelings, emotional responses and personal preferences.

It is generally accepted that nature (genes, physically chemistry, etc.) plays a role in forming personality types and it is perhaps also true that nature affects many personal preferences. However, if society were willing to comfortably allow all people, regardless of their physical biology, to feel and express themselves in whatever way came most naturally to them and did not categorize types of expression as either feminine or masculine, how many people would still have gender identification issues? One can’t know the answer but I suspect that many gender identification issues would disappear if this were the case.

The fact is, that most, if not all, societies do categorize many forms of expression as being either feminine or masculine. A person who is biologically of one gender but wishes to express in a form associated with the other gender has gender identification issues. Is this a case of nature playing a nasty trick on a person or is it a case of societies systems being too simplistic and confining? I’m inclined to believe it is the latter.

I know that there are many here who think of themselves as girls mistakenly born into boys bodies. I respect that and do not question the validity of that experience. It is fortunate that we live in a time when there is a solution to that problem. It is now possible to switch body types. Please do not think I mean to minimize the trauma involved in being born into that situation nor the difficult in going through such a profound transformation. I bring it up because for someone in this situation there is a way to resolve gender identification issues without requiring society to address its way of categorizing behaviors. Once the body type and the social expectations of behavior are aligned there ceases to be any gender identification issues.

There are also people here, myself among them, who have gender identification issues which can not be fixed by aligning body type with social expectations. All a sex change would do for me is change the polarization of my issues. On tests for male/female brain type I consistently score somewhere in the middle. I have no doubt that a sex change would make me worse off rather that better off. I’d be a woman frustrated by society’s difficulty in allowing me to express my masculine side. I’ve had a life time to develop successfully in a masculine role and I don’t want to give any of that up, I just want something else as well.

Is this more than I deserve? Is my problem that nature has put me in the middle of a scale or is it that it’s not my nature to be content with limitations imposed by social norms? Are other men, more self sacrificing than I, willing to stay within the bounds of social norms because they recognize then need for society to prescribe roles? Or is it that they are naturally more aligned with social expectations and therefore feel no discontent in conforming to society’s proscription for them?

I believe it was necessary for me to question prescribe roles, at least as they were defined within my family of origin. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it was a matter of emotional survival. Here’s where nurture played a role in my forming my gender identification issues.

My father believed men should be emotionless automatons and he considered any display of emotion, other than anger, as feminine. I was surrounded with symbols of war. War was portrayed as terrible and brutal but inevitable and the detached warrior was glorified above all other roles. My bother and I were trained to repress out feelings and to approach life like an unavoidable war.

Perhaps this is just self justification but I think I started cross-dressing because I needed relief from the strain of the male role I was expected to play. My parents setup an extreme male role model, extreme even beyond social norms of the time, and enforced their ideas of acceptable male behavior with undue harshness.

I chose to meet expectations and complied in most every way, except that I kept a certain 'unacceptable' part of myself alive by keeping it secret. This part I conceptualized as feminine and paid homage to it by clothing myself in the most powerful symbols of femininity that I could find; women’s underwear. Underwear was symbolic in other ways too. This was a hidden but intensely intimate aspect of my personality so it was appropriate that it was honored with clothes designed to be kept hidden, underneath my outer image but close to my skin.

At night, under the sheets, I’d slip into panties and then I’d give myself permission to feel my vulnerability, to be small and weak but also precious and admired; like a small blooming flower that against the odds pokes out from a crack in the pavement and is allow to survive by the passing pedestrians who, though they could easily step on it, carefully avoid damaging it because the unexpected flash of color brought them a little smile.

I believe that the childhood nurturing I was exposed to threatened to kill a natural part of my personality. To save this part I created a symbolic ritual in which I conceptualized that threatened part as feminine and paid homage to it as such. My hidden ritual worked and I have no doubt I’m a better and more complete person today because I found it.

Is the part of my personality that I saved with feminine symbols essentially feminine in nature, I’m not sure that it is, certainly not like having a womb is. I think it’s more likely that it is society that insists on assigning certain feelings to a particular gender.

I’m sure there are tendencies that result from the biological differences in gender but most differences are because girls and boys simply express feelings that are nurtured more powerfully that those that are not. If everyone’s natural feelings were nurtured without regard to gender I’m sure the number of people with gender issues would be reduced, there would far fewer people with positive aspects of their personality and personal potential horribly undernourished, and the world would be far better off.

[Clare]

Wow Elysia, that's intense!

I know where you're coming from, but i think it will take me some time to digest it all!

You expresssed some points very well.

I feel some sympathy for you based on your description of your tough male upbringing.

I enjoy thought provoking posts - thank you!

Christine

[Holly]

Elysia, a wonderful essay. Well thought out and gave me some things to think about as well. Thank-you for posting... and congratulations on 100 posts!

[jamiepabicd]

for me, as far back as i can remember, i used to masturbate at a really young age and my fantasies were pretty much always about women's underwear and bikinis and such. in my teens i would get into my mother's lingerie drawer and well the rest is history. i don't know why i initially did this, it wasn't planned but after the first time i knew what i wanted. so i would say nature for me.

hugs and kisses
jamie

[Heather Daniels]

I've often wondered why I dress. Was I born this way, did my childhood have something to do with it? I grew up with no abnormal happenings, I played boy games and with boy toys. I do have an older sister that forced me to play makeup with her one time, but I doubt that had anything to do with it. I've stopped worrying about the "why" part, and now I just enjoy being a girl when I can.

[Stephenie]

Elysia,
I read your post several time before typing this.

I feel the same things that you talk about. I feel that when I am dressed in women's things that it means that I can feel things that as a man I'm not supposed to feel.

I was raised to not show emotions, that if you do that you will be ridacudled and this was reinforced as an adult. The only time I could cry was when I was alone. I learned to take the saddness and the feelings of tenderness and compassion and compartmentilize them and take the aggressive feeling and make a compartment for them. Now after all the years and reinforcement of the walls the keys to getting to those feeling have become few. One is dressing as a woman, the others only seem to open small parts of the box.

Councilor says that I feel that it's okay to feel emotoins when dressed because of having to hide it, but that I should feel that it's okay to feel them as a man also. Well I do feel them as a man, I just don't show it. And there are billions of people out there that who would prefer that. Men crying or showing compassion to another with a hug is not generally look at with goodwill.

I enjoy the feelings of dressing up and don't see it as a sexual thing though I do feel sexual urges (heterosexual) I do it most for the feelings of relaxation and to feel the tenderness that is normally suppressed.

If society where to allow man and women to act as they feel (not the angry hurtfull feeling) then yes there probably would be less Gender indentity issues. The less you define how people are suppose to feel and behave, the more open they can be.

Hope you all can understand this, It's nice to be able to talk about it with out feeling like your trying to defend yourself.

Stephenie

[Elysia]

Stephenie, I can understand what you’re saying. This is an interesting subject, thanks for starting the tread.

Holly and Christine, thanks for your kind comments.

I’ve spent lots of time thinking about why I feel compelled to cross-dress. Finding this site and finally being able to share these thoughts with other people who care about the subject is a great joy. It’s also great to read other’s views and get feedback. Without anyone to share with, it’s hard to know if you’re making any sense. It’s not good to be totally self referential. Thanks for being here.