nature vs nurture

[rhondamichelle]

As far as the nature vs nurture question goes I'm curious to see who among you thinks birth order is a factor in M2F crossdressing. A boy in an otherwise all girl family? The middle child syndrome? Or an only child? Has this ever been explored?

Rhonda Michelle

[Teri Jean]

I would say it doesn't really come into play. I'm from a familyof five children and I'm the eldest. I have one sister that is 10 months yourger and three brothers. Thinking about it a little I was looked to be the guide for the younger siblings so then Iit would be fun tosee the three brothers dressed. ha ha ah Now that would be fun. Something to consider though. Keli

[battybattybats]

I have heard of interesting results with homosexuality along those lines but with nature evidence rather than nurture!

[Angie G]

I'm an only child and was overprotected by my Mother. My Dad let me have free rain. And my Dad Was known to dress. Now I don't know if ether had an impact on my dressing but here I am Angie.:hugs:
Angie

[TommiTN]

I was raised by my mother. My father was pretty much uninvolved with me and my younger sister when he was home. So I was in a home with two women. Some femininity probably rubbed off on me, but I also have some fem physical traits, sparse body hair being the most noticeable. So, with me at least, it is probably a comination of nature and nurture. My mother did confide in me long ago that she wanted her first born to be a girl and was somewhat disappointed when I came out male. She also told me that she dressed me as a girl several times when I was very small and got a kick when other women who didn't know commented that I was "such a cute little girl". I don't recall any of this but have no reason to doubt it. She also told me after my Dad died that she caught him wearing her panties more than once. Again, nature or nurture? No real answer. I just enjoy it. :D

[Nadia-Maria]

As far as the nature vs nurture question goes I'm curious to see who among you thinks birth order is a factor in M2F crossdressing.
(...)
Has this ever been explored?
Rhonda Michelle

It has been explored a little in the scientific literature, but more often about gay people than about MtF CDers.


Is Birth Order playing a role in MtF ?
I would say : yes, it may have.

Still unaware about the results of any scientific studies about it, I had the (non-scientific) intuition birth order could play a role. But I was mistaken in believing that last born childs were more often CDers than first born childs.
The opposite might be true.


Anyway, about half a year ago, I initiated this poll in this forum about birth order of MtF CDers :

http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82380&page=4

There has been as many as 360 votants ! Thanks to all !!

This poll shows definitely it is a trend showing a significative differency between first born and last born childs, as for having CDing tendancies.
The difference is small but large enough to be statistically significant, from 360 votants.

First born childs are more often CDers than last born ones.

This probable finding goes against most of the current beliefs one can get from just generalizing from his/her own case or casual observations in their own surroundings.


A poll involving 360 votants on this forum is much more objective and significant than any belief of any individual person (including myself) in this forum.

At the moment I'm studying further the scientific publications about this subject in the literature.

Kisses

Nadia

[rhondamichelle]

Nadia your poll and its' results that the oldest is more likely to crossdress than the youngest raises another interesting question- since the oldest is likely to have more responsibility in helping to raise the younger children does that produce more stress while growing up and crossdressing is an outlet for that stress? Curiouser and curiouser but it is interesting to examine these things. I guess I have to be careful to not try and over-analyze things as well, lol!

RhondaMichelle

[Veronica27]

Is Birth Order playing a role in MtF ?
I would say : yes, it may have.

Nadia

This is a fascinating subject, and I can remember several similar polls being taken on the old Parsimony CDDF forum which no longer exists. Part of the skewing of the results toward more older siblings being CD may be the result of simple arithmetic. There are more people who are first born than any other spot in the order. Next most frequent are second born followed by third born and so on. Last born cannot be defined by a specific number, ie. first second third fourth, because it depends upon the size of the family.

The part that birth order may play in CDing, would be a result of nurture more than nature. Also, other factors must be taken into account such as the sex mix of each of the children. How many girls, vs how many boys, and where the CD stands in the mix. Also, to be factored in are the personalities of the other siblings as well as that of the parents. Do they welcome or shun any cross gender type of play or behaviour? The age spread between siblings may have an impact as well as the general nature of their relationship toward each other.

Comparison of similar families can indicate trends, i.e. in your poll the ratio in two children families was 58/35. However, what was the Male/Female ratio in that sample. If these were all boy/boy families, then there were 93 families surveyed. However, if lets say 10 of the 35 youngest siblings had an older brother while the other 25 had an older sister, does that mean that the presence of a male older role model creates less chance of producing a CD than having an older female role model. These numbers could be restated into numerous hypothetical configurations which may or may not answere the original query.

This is all fascinating stuff, at least to my mind. Incidentaly I am youngest of a b/g/b family.

Veronica

[jina]

In my case I think it's both. I am a very sensitive and artistic person by nature. I do have some feminine physical characteristics as well (scant body hair, long eyelashes, no adam's apple, non-pronounced brow). and then on the nurture side, my birth came a couple of years after a sister's who only managed to live a couple of days, due to a respiratory infection. My mother was "needing" me by the time i came along (and she had no ally in my older sister, who turned out to be a police captain) :). My mother was always telling me that she wanted a daughter like herself (pretty, refined) to be close to. My father was absentee. Maleness is not well represented in my family in general. I am a middle child.

When I look at the nurture side of things, it's pretty obvious to me that to some degree my development was "messed with". The thing that I can't figure out though is that I "love" being who i am... so, am I grateful that I didn't become what nature probably had in mind ?... I can't figure it out. Then you add in religion (yikes), and whether i have God's blessing to go off and be a girl at this point :). I really feel like "all is fine" and I am truly free to be me... I'm just not sure if it was all "originally" meant to be (?).

[Jonianne]

I am a firstborn with a sister 7 years younger (I also started CD at 7) and another brother 12 years after that. So essentially we were all single children as well.

[Nadia-Maria]

Part of the skewing of the results toward more older siblings being CD may be the result of simple arithmetic. There are more people who are first born than any other spot in the order.

Hi Veronica,

Thanks to your interesting response.

Please give me credit that my conclusion was not at all affected by the flaw (rather trivial) you pointed out.
Of course, I compared only what was strictly comparable, that is :
the last born to the first born, either in a two-childs family or in a more than 2 childs family.
Obviously, the one-only child family would not help.

Here is what I wrote in the #93 post of the poll-thread I referred to :

<< there is a definite pattern from the votes.

For instance, the first born is slightly more often a CDer than the last born, whether the family is of 2 childs only or of more than 2.
After 333 votes, the balance is 60% (first born) 40% (last born). >>

After 360 votes, we have to add 58/35 to 71/49, that are :

129 first born childs and 84 last born childs ;
Hence the balance 60% / 40% has remained the same.

This result of our poll is very important in itself, and I agree with you it’s fascinating.

You noticed << Incidentaly I am youngest of a b/g/b family.>>
So am I !! Exactly the same mix !!
It is interesting to notice that generalizing from only both of our cases would have been wholly foolish.
However I observe there is an innate tendancy to wanting to generalize from oneself.

Please, observe I never said you wanted yourself to do this sweeeping generalization....

Kisses

Nadia

[michelle2b]

While statistics about nature Vs nurture are interesting, I do not think they are valid.

Everyone in the world has both a male side and a female side. Only the degree of maleness or femaleness varies. These have nothing to do with your reproductive type. Gender (ie. brain sex) and reproductive type (ie. sperm or egg) are totally different things. In addition, these have no relation to sexual orientation. Society has two neat buckets - "someone who is born with organs that will product sperm will have the male brain sex and will be attracted to women" and "someone who is born with the organs that will produce eggs will have the female brain sex and will be attracted to men". That's it! No more buckets. No more possibilities. Do not ask any more questions. This is how god intended the world to be. So stop thinking any further and follow along with society and you won't be hassled.

While most people in the world are conformists and followers, there are only a small percentage of people who will stand up for who they are. One way to look at the statistical analysis is as follows - The first child in the family typically follows the norms, with a few discrepancies. The second child will notice the discrepancies (if he/she is smart enough) and observe the loopholes that he/she can exploit. As the result, the second child has a greater chance of being a non-conformist than the first. The probability of a child being non-conformist increases as you have more children in the same family. In addition, younger siblings sometimes also try to be different from their elder siblings to get more attention in the world they live in. You will find other methods of understanding the statistics too.

Statistics makes sense when you have rational parameters (whether discrete or continuous data), but not when you have irrational parameters. Using statistics on irrational parameters (such as human behavior and complex social dynamics) is the wrong application of statistics. In fact, we do not even know all the parameters that must be taken into account to establish nurture as the cause of behavioral traits.

When a child does not conform with the social norm of gender, he/she will begin to demonstrate tendencies that do not fit with what is expected from others of the same reproductive type. For the female kids in the modern world, not conforming to the gender role is considered "women's liberation". So they have it easy. For the male kids, not conforming to the expected gender role is more painful and hence it gets more easily identified and recognized. The data could be skewed based on the behavior of parents and other adults around the children, the exposure the children get to various things in life (eg. the elder kid may live a poorer life than the younger one), etc. We do not know all the parameters to consider.

Here's how I think about it - The gender role that you want to play in society (which your crossdressing seems to reflect) is due to nature, ie. biological. The fact that you actually do not conform to society and express yourself by crossdressing (or whether you do not do so) is nurture - you are capable of standing up for yourself and be yourself based on your upbringing. There are millions of people who will never crossdress and they will always conform, even if they feel like the gender opposite to the one assigned to them based on their reproductive role. This part is merely my opinion, and I do not have data to back this up.

Because you cannot get the true underlying data due to all the social dynamics around gender and social conformity, the statistics about nature Vs nurture will be wrong.

[Nadia-Maria]

While statistics about nature Vs nurture are interesting, I do not think they are valid.

(...)
Because you cannot get the true underlying data due to all the social dynamics around gender and social conformity, the statistics about nature Vs nurture will be wrong.


There may be a huge difference between :
1) just deriving statistics,
2) trying to interpret these statistics.

I believe your post makes sort of mix of both attitudes.
Hence your wording being in my opinion much too general, and your possibly flawed conclusion.

Moreover your point was completely different from mine, because I noticed that nothing of what you wrote contradicted both my posts at all.

Nevertheless, even if your post was not at all aimed at mines, I believe useful to precise a few things to shed more light in this complexe debate.

Let's notice that I said nothing about "nature" nor "nurture" in both my posts, because they are mere "interpretations", and I wanted to obtain statistics without any interpretations (which might turn out to be wrong).
I agree with you that you must be very cautious trying to interpet any statistics.
Many people do hate statistics, because they are used to deal with incorrect interpretations, or unproper polls.


As for me, I have derived statistics about birth order and MtF
and I go on believing they are essentially not wrong. (yet only a first approach of a complexe matter)

I go on believing that birth order "may play a role" in MtF, just like I already wrote. And that you didn't bring any proof of the contrary.

Kisses

Nadia

[Veronica27]

:)

Please give me credit that my conclusion was not at all affected by the flaw (rather trivial) you pointed out.
Nadia


Hi Nadia

I did not intend my comment to appear to be pointing out a flaw in any of your reasoning. I just happen to love this particular subject, and wanted to make some of my own observations. I apologize for any misunderstanding (on rereading I can see how it could happen).:o

I played around with some of the numbers from your original poll of two child families where there was a 58/35 split meaning there were 93 such families in total represented. If we make two separate assumptions as to family gender split, we can draw very different conclusions from the same raw data.

If the 58 oldest siblings had a mixture of 40 younger brothers and 18 younger sisters, while the 35 youngest siblings had a mixture of 10 older brothers and 25 older sisters, then their would have been 18 b/g families, 50 b/b families and 25 g/b families. The results of the b/b families would show a 40/10 split meaning 4 times as many eldest boys as youngest boys crossdress.

However if we alter the assumption of the 58 oldest siblings to be 20 younger brothers and 38 younger sisters while the 35 youngest siblings had 25 older brothers and 10 older sisters, then the family split would be 38 b/g families, 45b/b families and 10 g/b families. The ratio in the b/b families would be 20 older brothers and 25 younger brothers indicating more youngers boys crossdress.

Someone once said there are lies, damn lies and statistics. I enjoy playing with the numbers and trying to draw inferences and conclusions from them almost as much as I enjoy crossdressing, even though I know how inconclusive those conclusions can be.

In any event it was a great post and again this one is meant to simply add some thoughts to the whole subject and not point out any flaws. The whole feld of statistics is somewhat flawed in any event. :)



Veronica

p.s. As a member of a b/g/b family, was there very much age spread among you or were you very close in age? Do you think that having an older sister in the mix, with the more ready availability of female clothing, had any impact on you being a crossdresser?

[rhondamichelle]

I am pleased to see that the questions I raised have produced such thoughtful insights and information. As a newbe who only recently decided to acknowledge "Rhonda Michelle" and then joining this forum I feel like the robot in the movie,I think it was "Johnnie 7" or something like that but the qoute was "Imput....more imput!" it seems like I have a thousand questions, especially the essential ones like"Why am I this way?" and "What could have made me this way?" I often thought that I was missing or had an extra x or y chromosone in my genetic makeup or something. I am a true middle child (b/g/b/g/b) with very little distance between siblings and always related more socially to my sisters than my brothers.

[Veronica27]

While statistics about nature Vs nurture are interesting, I do not think they are valid.

Everyone in the world has both a male side and a female side.

Here's how I think about it - The gender role that you want to play in society (which your crossdressing seems to reflect) is due to nature, ie. biological. The fact that you actually do not conform to society and express yourself by crossdressing (or whether you do not do so) is nurture - you are capable of standing up for yourself and be yourself based on your upbringing.
Because you cannot get the true underlying data due to all the social dynamics around gender and social conformity, the statistics about nature Vs nurture will be wrong.

Hi Michelle

I agree with much that you say here, particularly as to the reliability of statistics, even though I enjoy exploring what they tend to indicate to us. Regardless of our sex, we are all human beings and are capable of expressing the entire range of human emotions and responses. There are biological differences between the sexes (primarily hormonal) that create a tendency towards certain gender qualities in one sex, more than the other. These qualities are dubbed masculinity and femininity. However, they are not the exclusive preserve of one sex or the other, but simply a tendency toward that type of behaviour, the extent of which can vary from individual to individual. Added to this "natural" tendency toward masculinity and femininity are all the rules that have been imposed upon us by our society and culture. In the case of the male, these rules and natural tendencies are more rigidly enforced than is the case with the female. This is the result of the concept of male supremacy that has been handed down through the ages, and which
has helped to shape the nature of our society and its institutions. There is no longer any validity or reason for this concept, but it has been extremely difficult to rid from society's thinking, especially in the defining of manhood and masculinity.

Regarding the nurture vs nature question, I think there is a certain amount of confusion as to what constitutes "nature" in regard to crossdressing and transgendered behaviours. Because we are all capable of possessing both masculine and feminine qualities, it does not mean that we must possess a degree of gender dysphoria, or that we must necessarily have a female side that needs to be expressed. Who we are is a complex mixture of hormonal influences, genetics, personality, intellect, mental and physical abilities and so on. A desire to crossdress does not always emanate from some innate need that has made us this way and over which we have no control. It could be the result of our personality and intellect that has aroused our curiosity about things we observe but are denied for the simple reason that we are male. Satisfying that curiosity and experiencing the pleasures it brings can create a lifelong desire for further exploration.

This is not the case for everyone, but I think that it is the most difficult scenario for people to understand, as they like to see everything in black and white. You are either straight or gay; you experience gender confusion to a greater or lesser extent, or you are perfectly content with your sex and gender; You want to be a woman if you are a man or you are content being a man (or vice versa for women). They can even understand the desire of the drag queen to poke some gentle fun at the feminine excesses of society. But why would an otherwise happy and content man, who is confident in his gender, want to dress like a woman from time to time, and do so as realistically as possible? It is inconceivable to many. I have some theories as to why this is so, and why I think it applies to me, but it is a bit beyond the subject of this thread.

Veronica

[Ballerina]

I feel it's nature for me. I've never had a female model to go off of. My mom is nothing but a big bag of testosterone driven adrenaline and doesn't begin to wear anything outside of the "mom" clothing. I'm the youngest of 6 kids (3 bros, 3 sis) and I was practically raised as an only child after I turned 8. My drive for women's clothing was developed all on my own.

[StaceyJane]

I can't think of anything that happened growing up that made me want to be a girl. If there was it happened pretty early because by first grade I already wanted to be one of the girls.


Stacey

[monique01]

I was raised with two sisters and my dad didn't have much interaction with me and sometimes now I think that may be the reason that I identify more on the feminine side.

[michelle2b]

Moreover your point was completely different from mine, because I noticed that nothing of what you wrote contradicted both my posts at all.

Sounds like you were too attached to your analysis :) and something I said really affected you. That was not my intent.



Nevertheless, even if your post was not at all aimed at mines, I believe useful to precise a few things to shed more light in this complexe debate.

Meaning? What are your underlying belief or implication about me while you made that statement?



Many people do hate statistics, because they are used to deal with incorrect interpretations, or unproper polls.

Again, assumption and implication about me in your statement?




I go on believing that birth order "may play a role" in MtF, just like I already wrote. And that you didn't bring any proof of the contrary.

I think the "belief" in birth order has already colored the statistical analysis.


My point is that the methodology of the analysis is faulty when it comes to gender analysis based on voluntary claims about gender. If we begin with the fundamental derivations of statistics and probability, the derivations deal with rational numbers. If we apply statistics and probability to irrational numbers, that's the incorrect application of statistics and probability. The point that makes the factors irrational is the fact that people behave irrationally and the self-identification of gender is influenced by social dynamics.

Perhaps it is a certain birth order that makes them come out as crossdressers while the others may stay in the closet. Perhaps it is a certain aspect of their family situation that makes them come out.

So even if it is equally likely for all siblings regardless of birth order to be crossdressers, those who self-identify as crossdressers may be affected by a certain social dynamic.

Regarding Veronica's point, I totally agree - those who do come out are unlikely to be faking crossdressing. Why go through the hassles to come out if you are just faking it! Right? My point is not about those who come out, but rather the fact that the statistics are skewed by those who do not come out, and by those who have been more easily influenced by the dogmas of society around them that they suppressed their crossdressing feelings so much that they do not need to do it at all. Finally, most in the world would probably be open to crossdressing to some extent if it were not for the social attitudes towards doing so. The degrees for the "need" to crossdress may differ. So what is the threshold you are measuring? Just because two people crossdress, their need to crossdress is not the same - one person may do it because it's possible for him to do so and another may do because it is necessary.

While each individual's decision to crossdress or not may appear rational within a given context, the behavioral changes due to the variety of social dynamics make the overall underlying data irrational. Or you should look at each individual category based on social dynamics separately. You would not apply normal distribution statistics to a penta-modal data set, would you?

Also, if we start with a sample of self-identified crossdressers and analyze their families, the probabilities we get are faulty. We should be starting with a random sample of the total population of everyone (crossdressers and non-crossdressers).

My point is that statistics is being applied incorrectly to determine the effect of birth order. The data gathering method, the interpretation and the methodology are all faulty.

This is not a personal attack against anybody, so please do not treat it as such. I have made the same mistakes in applying statistics and when the results did not match the real world, I admitted to my mistakes and learned from them.

[Kris Vasquez]

Three sisters and me. One was 9 years older than me and used to bring her girlfriends around and it drove me absolutely crazy. Ended up wearing my sister's clothesjust to emulate them.

[Jess_cd32]

IMO we're just wired this way at birth, some seem to have only part time desires and others that are fully female in a males body at the other end of the spectrum. I've talked with enough cd's TS to feel this way and from what I've learned in scientific differences between straight males and TS for instance.

It's basically the same deal with your sexual identity I believe, some straight, some bi, some fully attracted only to the same sex. It's not just limited as well to humans, dolphins have sex for pleasure, pigeons have been reported as some gay etc... .

How many of us started dressing at 7-8 y/o like I did and had no idea why, at that age we don't really even know about identities ect... but it starts early, some as early as 3 y/o, a TS told me once she knew at that age she was a girl in a boys body.

I think you'll find better answers here from real people who experience it than a psycologist that read up on the subject, just my .02

[stevie b]

Hi, there has been some research with the NvN thing. The more children a mother has they say there is less testosterone and there is more chance of being gay or CD or TS. There are a lot of children who grow up in same sex enviroments and they are not influenced by this. The New Scientist has recently published research info on a gene that has been found in CDers, which would explain a lot. There is also evidence that when a mother is pregnant during the first weeks or so when the childs gender is forming interruptions in the testoserone levels can leave the child to be anywhere from gay to CD to TS, during this time major traumer to the mother, stress illness etc can effect the gender growth.
Anyway that is what I have read recently, hopefully they will find out one day.xx

[Nadia-Maria]

:)
Hi Nadia
(...)


Hi Veronica,

Thank You for your response. :love:

As for the comments you raised and the interesting calculations you made, I prefer to answer you privately. Such matters are very specialized and may be out of topic in this forum.



:)
p.s. As a member of a b/g/b family, was there very much age spread among you or were you very close in age? Do you think that having an older sister in the mix, with the more ready availability of female clothing, had any impact on you being a crossdresser?

My brother was 4 years older and my sister 2 yrs older than me, so we were rather close in age, and have been often playing together.

The major impact on me being a crossdresser was from my mother who wanted a girl instead of a boy, as her last child. She was happy I had a girlie face and beautiful hair so that she even crossdressed me as a baby ! Later, I identified significatively to her, because I was her preferred child, as we had the same temperamental traits whereas my father had a violent temper and was making me very afraid of him.

I preferred to dress in my mother's clothes. I liked her smell very much and she was much more lenient to me than my sister who was essentially jealous of me being the preferred child of her mother.

Kisses

Nadia

[sometimes_miss]

I kept waiting until I could find someone reference 'there are lies, damned lies, and there are statistics'. I don't remember who said it, but always believed it. Someone else once said that if you look long enough, you can find a statistic to support any view you want. That's what I think we are seeing here. Especially when dealing with subjects such as crossdressing and other gender 'abnormalities', you are going to need a very large sample, and also understand that many people are going to answer deceptively. Example; over the years, I've come across several statistics that suggest that about 1.5&#37; of women find crossdressing acceptable in a male mate. That doesn't seem to correspond to reality, however. I have posted personal ads several times, identical other than mentioning the crossdressing at the end of my description. The 'plain' ad always gets lots of responses, the one that mentions the crossdressing gets some, but mostly sympathetic letters from women telling me that there's someone out there for me, just that they aren't 'it'. This has been going on since 1998, after I divorced. Of a population of about 300 million, this would suggest that there are about 2.25 million women for us. That doesn't seem to be true.
For some of us it's more nature, for some, more nurture; for most, I'm guessing it's some of both. Genetically I guess, I'm not predisposed towards aggression in any way, which I would say makes me less masculine, yet I don't think if I'd been brought up normally that I would have ever been transgendered; but there's no 'control' group in this big experiment called life, so we'll never know.