Some of us were born this way

So, in another thread, I ask the question, "Are we born this way?"

A lot of the responders said, "Yes".

I've read this really amazing hypothesis about how we could be born this way. And it's not necessarily in our genes.

The hypothesis states that it is gestational. During fetal development in the womb, the fetus goes through multiple stages of development. And, the fetal development doesn't take place in one fell swoop; it is staged over the 39 months of gestation.

Let me discuss MtF, and leave it to the reader to develop FtM. The genitals are largely complete by the beginning (14 to 17 weeks) of the second trimester. At this time, the brain is largely an undifferentiated blob. The brain is largely complete early (27 through 31 weeks) in the third trimester. With a normal cis boy, the genitals and the brain are both male. However, in a trans male, the genitals are formed as male by 17 weeks. However, somewhere late in the second trimester, something happens, and the fetus becomes doused in Estrogen. I like to refer to it as "Estrogen poisoning", but feel free to call it what you want. The Estrogen causes the brain to develop as female, leading to male genitals and female brain. If you recall my explanation of software in my previous post, these changes in the brain are in hardware. They are permanent.

There have been some studies that asserts that the basic organization of the male brain and the female brain are different.

Interestingly, there is actually a visible physical manifestation. Normally, the middle finger is longer than the ring finger. However, the hormone switch causes the ring finger to be as long as or longer than the middle finger. It has been postulated that finger length is in proportion to the Estrogen Poisoning.

For those of you who have significant gender dysphoria or have always felt like a girl, this may be the physiological process that made you that way.

In my case, I am 100% sure that it is not gestational or environmental, it is genetic.

I can't explain this or do I know what to name what happen to me. I'll just tell my story and you may have had the same thing happen. I was born 1oo per cent male, body wise. However, before I was old enough for my brain to start recording I would take my older sisters panties and wear them. When I was done, I would put them under a bed. How I know this my Mom and sister both told me I did it, but I do not remember any of that. When my sister needed panties she and Mom would start looking under beds.

The first time I remember anything about crossdressing was about 4 years old and almost every day I would look for my Mom's black OBG and put it on and hide. I knew I was not supposed to wear it, but at the time I never knew why. If I got still my Mom would look for me and find me hiding and make me take off her girdle, until the next time. It was a reputation cycle, until I got old enough to know how to hide better and then got my own things to wear.

Steffi,
I was lead to believe just after conception the natural development is on the female line and at some point some "deviate " to form male parts but the brain as you say does not discern sexuality till sometime after . The problem arises when the physical parts don't fully align with the sexual asignment in the brain , in fact that alignment may never happen as it continues after birth . We may look like a boy but our brains are suggesting something different , that misalignment is not consistent between individuals , this is why we each have a slightly different story to tell , obviously that may be influenced by our environment .

There is no reason to suggest the same doesn't apply to females , they may have female parts but their brains are aligned more as a male .

The one problem I encountered was after explaining this to my mother , she later rang me very upset because because she felt she was responsible for my gender issues . I eventually persuaded her that it was no one's fault , sometimes nature doesn't stick to the rules , which isn't surprisning when you consider how complex a human being is .

Interesting.

I came to this conclusion that I was born this way based on my mother?s medical history. Her and my father were married soon after the end of WWII. They started trying to have kids but she had several miscarriages before I came along. She ended up passing away from a brain tumor a month short of my 11th birthday.

The tumor was on her pituitary gland. The pituitary is involved in secreting hormones that are believed to help determine gender identity. She passed in August of 1962 and doctors speculated that the tumor was hindering development and caused her miscarriages. In summary I think that her situation with me in the womb and the connection to my gender raises some interesting possibilities. I am likely one of the few on here who can point to something specific as possibly being a contributing factor.

I believe it could be something spiritual, related to past lives.

The gestational hormone "storm" theory is credible, at least, but the fact that we have no good answer for the "why?" question points up the woeful lack of research into our lot.

In my case, I was born as a very underdeveloped preeme baby with a form of what they called, Pseudohermaphroditism or gonadal dysgenesis, but the causes and treatments back then were experimental at best. Today, the debate continues but I do feel genetics play a important role as does environment.
I do believe I should have been a girl as my breast did develop. I also think it it had a lot do do with how I was raised. My Mom was banking on birthing a daughter after all male children and I was that last chance. So when I was coddled and pampered, wore nighties to facilitate changing bandages and diapers, and slept with my Mother while Dad was on the road working, till I was 6 or so. Mom was a feminine influence in my early development.
Before my 10th birthday my breasts were growing and they were as big as developing girls of my age in school. Presenting as a boy was becoming a problem and was bullied, beat up, and hospitalized twice because of the abuse.
My parents separated over controversy on my development and I moved away with my mother to continuing to raise me as a daughter even though I developed as a boy on the abdomen area and a girl on the chest area.
Because my parents couldn't afford reassignment, I continue to be male most times. Mom got back with Dad when I finished college.
In my 20's, I learned the benefits living as a male, in a male dominant society during my time in bootcamp for the Navy.
I grew up as male those years but still presented when I could as how I was raised in my teens, it's been a wild ride! :rolleyes:

Genetic, gestational, environmental, nature, nurture, past lives, does it have to be just one?
Everything in our entire existence has led us to where we are today in this very minute, just enjoy where you are regardless of how you got here, hold on and enjoy the ride...

We tend to look for single causes of things, but as a biologist myself when it comes to biology single causes are exceedingly rare. Multiple causes seems to pretty much the rule. It is different than in physics and chemistry where mathematical precision is the rule when it comes to causation. Biology is based on a "close enough" kind of multidimensional causation. Variation and difference is the rule and all enveloping shells of explanation are more illusions of our brains than actually there in reality. In other words clearly defined boundaries basically don't exist in biology - you can always find a mountain of exceptions to the rules.

Very recent studies have overturned a lot of the old thinking that composes your description of causes. One main thing is this idea of male and female brains. Apparently, there is no such thing. In fact, in many respects they are almost interchangeable. In fact, the brain is one of the few organs that is strongly asexual. The most modern brain scanning technology has found that many of the things we thought were there that formed distinctions simply do not exist.

So, as all behavior is generated in the brain and gender is a behavior then the male vs. female distinction in the brain really doesn't exist to the point where one can say with high certainty the brains are different. It appears to come down to various high variable neural networks that are constantly changing as experiences and methods of dealing with those experiences change. This occurs through brain plasticity - the ability of the brain to rewire itself, often very quickly, to deal with changing circumstances. Each person has a unique assembly of neural networks that generate behaviors that both sexes perform as well as neural networks that are most characteristic of either males or females, AND all of them can switch back and form between the three groups - male-like, female-like, and intermediate. The changes occur due to changing experiences and sometimes the change can take a very short time to implement.

But it appears that maybe genetics sets up a range within the brain that somewhat controls the limit as to how much the neural networks can change and that limits behavioral variation to some generalized range. As I said, single causes in biology are very rare and it does not appear that gender generation is one of those rare single cause phenomena.

The finger length test has a very low level of credibility of being an indication and may be coincidental rather than indicating a causal pathway. Same thing with the observation that left handedness is more common in TG people than in the general population. A hint of a causal pathway or just a coincidence? Hard to tell for sure.

Bottom line is that neuroscience is closing in on a the cause of gender variance and it is appearing that it is likely due to several processes that are interacting. Is that the case for sure? It appears to be the case and it is looking good but there are still a lot of unknowns. One things seems to be sure. A great deal of the old causal assumptions have turned out to be just that - assumptions with very little supporting evidence and no smoking guns to be found. Some of the assumptions are perhaps correct, but others are just fabrications that have no actual verifiable evidence to support their truth.

Gretchen,
With neuroscience possibly homing in on a more consistent answer it may raise the question of knowing enough to determine a persons gender more precisely . In simple terms suggesting we might see a " CURE " ! I know that comment goes on to suggest it's an illness which we know it isn't but I'm not sure if I could honestly say I would want to be cured if it was offered .

If I recall I asked the question of a cure sometime ago but it is also a perennial question that comes round every so often which is inevitable for our communtiy .

I guess my brain plasticity has learnt that I'm happy with my situation , whether it is contentment with my gender or contentment with society , that possibly raises the question , " Does it really matter ?"

I do believe I was born this way.
Be it DNA or just some hormonal change in the womb I don't know, but definitely from the beginning. I've always had these feelings.

I have yet to find a person for whom I feel the need to explain why I do what I do.

Personally, I would not say I was born the "way" that I am. I was born as normal as could be, and had a pretty normal childhood. Even after being intrigued by mom's pantyhose as a kid and trying them on, I continued to be interested in girls from middle school to my early 20's. I just had a thing for women's clothing, and never experienced any dysphoria. Eventually a combination of my tastes and curiosity had me meeting with other cd's and men on occasion. Been a few years since I've been with a woman and I don't really see myself "going back" at the moment. When I can't dress up, I'm quite comfortable in my own skin. But when I can, I love to transform into Stefanie as a sort of alter-ego. I don't mean to belittle others with different experiences or feelings, but the nature of mine can definitely be characterized by I consciously chose this.

Some people are born the way they are, and others like myself choose what they want to be.

I agreed with cheryT on this one. I have a younger brother raised in the same environment as me but he is not a cd .Go figure.

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Originally Posted by Edelia

I believe it could be something spiritual, related to past lives.

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I believe the same.... that I really enjoy being a woman in past lives.

Kisses!

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Originally Posted by Edelia

I believe it could be something spiritual, related to past lives.

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I agreed with you :)

I agree, some are definitely born this way. My earliest memory that I know of was me dressing up in my mom?s nighties and the like at lord knows what age. It might have been 3 or 4 for all I know. Why the heck would I do that? Didn?t even know what my name was back then probably.

Maybe this will rearrange my thinking.

I will have to give it some thought.

My 2 cents, I was born this way.
Born 1955, Sears & JC Penny catalog as a young kid the lingerie and dresses was my 1st place to look at for seems like hours / several days after we got the catalogs in the mail.

Most of my friends were girls within walking distance ( all girls my age ) of our house. The mothers would switch around doing day care, was lots of playing house at their homes. I was not always the man of the playhouse.

By 5 years old more or less, one of my friends and myself switched panties and underwear while in her bedroom playing.
From that point I was hooked. Definitely not a sexual thing at that age. Puberty was very hard on me, with my brain says girl but with boy bits. Now 60 years later, a lot of water under this bridge.

My 1st pair of forms purchased was when I was a freshman in college order by phone mail order tools days to arrive to the local Sears or JCP and had to walk into the store to accept the phone in order. Definitely a high heart rate event, to walk in and pickup. Lots of pink fog.

So Michelle it is, Not a 24/7 girl but dressed with something/‘s daily to manage my pink fog.
Wife of 40 plus years is accepted but still has issues as most wives.

There is no doubt in my mind that I was born this way. I remember from as early as three or four years of age being drawn to women's clothes.

I feel I was born this way.Mom does too,she saw something in me that was way different in me growing up.One was me liking to wear girls clothes part time at first.Now as fulltime,she sees me a much happier daughter not looking back

In the womb, we know nothing about clothing. For the first year or two of our lives, we still know nothing about clothing, we wear what adults dress us in. I would say we are three or four years old before we realize that some of us are boys and some of us are girls and that our clothing is (usually) different. It's a few more years before we realize that what is between our legs is different.

I think the desire to wear women's clothes (and sometimes pretend that we are women) comes from our environment. Interactions we have with other people. Things like thinking that our parents treat girls better than they treat boys, etc.

Realize that anyone can write and publish a "hypothesis". Nobody knows what goes on in the womb.

The earliest memories I have are of being fascinated with women's nylon stockings and underwear - before puberty. I was born this way. Could be because my mother wanted a girl and was vocal about it.

Whew................. discussing how we came to be as we are is exhausting. I, like many here, had many years of self loathing over my desires, feelings and thoughts. I always struggled with the "why" I had these feelings and desires. It took me a long time to finally accept myself as a good person with feelings and desires that do not fit within mainstream normals. Bringing up the why question ( or a similar were we born this way ?) question, for me, requires reliving the thoughts of the past I had finally come to peace with. So with that said I figure I may have been born this way or I could have been conditioned this way through my life events .............. either way it doesn't change the fact I am a crossdresser and that fact is not going to change (I know I have tried). Hopefully my response is not offensive it was not meant to be. Its just how I think and feel. The good news is I am content with who I am no matter how I became who I am. I consider myself to be a lucky thankful person.

Teri

Hi Steffi, I have been in this program for 74 years now started around 4 years old,

>>>>>>Orchid**O:daydreaming:O**

I am not sure why! I do know that at 4-6 I wanted a dress as my playmate threw hers over her head and I thought that was neat!
I was born male after my parents lost 3 daughters because of blood pressure problems! It is possible I was born male to survive so my parents could be parents!
I do not know why for sure! I do know I am happier than I ever was before! I am 24/7/365 and loving it! Being happy is more important than why any day! Hugs Lana Mae

Some were born this way, some were not. Some may be genetically caused, some, not. Some affected in the womb by mothers hormones, or perhaps the generation of female hormones at the wrong time. And others, by experiences after being born. Or any combination of the above. The insistence that it's something which is always completely out of control, is just wishful desire that no one is ever to blame. It's understandable; after all, if it might be something avoidable, it would fuel the hater's beliefs that all of us aren't what we should be, and that they must try to reverse the process somehow. Same as with their belief that homosexuality is something that they must find a 'cure' for. All because they can't stand the idea that we exist.

Still, that doesn't mean that we must ignore all the possibilities, just because of all the morons in the world who can't get their head around the fact that others who are different from themselves, also have the right to exist peacefully and live out our lives the way we want to, as opposed to the way that they want us to.

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Originally Posted by Sometimes Steffi

I've read this really amazing hypothesis about how we could be born this way. And it's not necessarily in our genes. And, the fetal development doesn't take place in one fell swoop; it is staged over the 39 months of gestation.

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I'm surprised none of the GG's caught this. My sympathies are extended to you all. THIRTY-NINE MONTHS! No wonder my mother hated me!

This is a fascinating topic in so many ways.

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Originally Posted by Teresa

I was lead to believe just after conception the natural development is on the female line and at some point some "deviate " to form male parts but the brain as you say does not discern sexuality till sometime after . The problem arises when the physical parts don't fully align with the sexual asignment in the brain , in fact that alignment may never happen as it continues after birth . We may look like a boy but our brains are suggesting something different , that misalignment is not consistent between individuals , this is why we each have a slightly different story to tell , obviously that may be influenced by our environment .

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Yes, by default the embryo will develop as female. It takes "watering" with male hormones to make it grow into a male instead. In Turner's syndrome, where one of two X chromosomes is missing (XO), the embryo develops physiologically and psychologically as female, while suffering from genetic defects including sterility. It seems that at least one X chromosome is needed to survive. As far as I know, nobody ever survived with just a Y chromosome.

I think it's safe to say that significant sex and gender anomalies just about always boil down in one way or another to variations in the uterine hormonal environment. The question is what caused those variations in the first place. That can be a number of things, certainly including (but not limited to) genetic predispositions. Even if the genes were all perfect at conception, all kinds of "accidents" can happen during gestation. Hormonal supply may be interfered with, or tumors may generate excess testosterone or estrogen, Sometimes medications may have side effects of this kind. One way or another, the upshot is that we end up being born this way.

Since masculinization requires a continuing and healthy supply of testosterone for the process to complete normally, it's commoner for this process to be disrupted at some stage than it is for a female fetus to be accidentally masculinized. That probably accounts for the fact that there are more male-to-female transsexuals than female-to-male.

It's likely that the effect of a hormonal anomaly depends on timing, since different parts of the body and brain develop at different times during gestation. So for instance whatever features of the brain are responsible for overall "masculinity" or "femininity," and for a sense of gender identity, may develop at a different time from the mechanism responsible for sexual orientation. So depending on the stage at which a hormonal anomaly occurs, someone born male may be transgender, but entirely "straight," while a gay guy may or may not be "effeminate." He's often completely masculine in other ways. The two traits can be correlated, but are quite independent of one another. Somebody told me a long time ago that 45 percent of male-to-female transsexuals end up "lesbian" in orientation. I can't vouch for that statistic, but maybe somebody else knows.

Speaking of gayness, another cause of hormonal anomalies can be stress during pregnancy, which lowers the level of male hormones in the uterus. Some researchers decades ago noted that when pregnant rats were subjected to severe stress, male rats born subsequently were sexually attracted to other male rats. An East German researcher named Guenter Doerner apparently devoted his career to studying homosexuality and its causes, and he surveyed 800 gay men, with special attention to their birth dates. He found significantly more were born during the stressful years of World War II, with a spike during the last months of the war when Germany was being invaded and stress and fear were high. I don't know that he ever studied transgender conditions, but it would have been interesting to know if any similar phenomenon occurred regarding gender.

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Originally Posted by Teresa

The one problem I encountered was after explaining this to my mother , she later rang me very upset because because she felt she was responsible for my gender issues . I eventually persuaded her that it was no one's fault , sometimes nature doesn't stick to the rules , which isn't surprising when you consider how complex a human being is .

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I'm sorry that happened, Teresa, but I'm glad you persuaded your mother that it was never her fault. Mothers are reputed to suffer from a perennial sense of guilt, much of it totally undeserved, I would not have expected her to react the way she did, but she instantly flew to wondering if she "did something wrong" during pregnancy, which I'm sure she didn't.

That's one of the nice things I like about "natural" explanations. Thinking back, since my crossdressing (like many) started off as "sexual" in nature, luckily I never had to struggle with questions of gender identity or of gayness. For me it was just "why do I have this particular kink?" which I could put down to "fetishism" once I learned about that. It wasn't quite the whole story, but it would do as a placeholder for the time being. But it wouldn't be healthy at all if I started suspecting I was "this way" because of something my parents or someone else "did to me." I think my mother would have preferred a girl. Sometimes when I did something boisterous and naughty as a little boy she would say "Why couldn't I have a nice, quiet little girl instead?" (If boys are boisterous, are girls girlsterous?) However, it didn't matter, because she didn't harp on that theme, and I was loved anyway. But imagine going through life with bitterness and resentment, full of needless blame because "you or they 'made me' this way!" How miserable for everyone concerned, especially myself!

It wasn't until years later that I started thinking about causes, probably because there was so much social constructionist junk contaminating the field of gender that it wasn't until nearly the end of last century that more reliable research about biological causes began to gain publicity. I guess it had to wait for the technology to advance far enough. Anyway it's far more comforting to be able to say "I was just born this way. It wasn't anybody's 'fault.' It was Nature. Accident or not, it was the way I was meant to be, the way I was all along." I gather from your posts that you feel the same. Good for you!

hello Steffi,
it could be conditioning - because for the 9 months before I was born I only wore women's clothing!
just a thought!
luv J

In her excellent book, "Sexing the Body" Anne Fausto-Sterling elucidates the seemingly endless variety of ways that hormones affect the development and function of the human body, both physically and behaviorally.

Having been attracted to women's clothing, and also attracted to other feminine activities, in spite of my deep sense of shame about this throughout my early life, in a social climate that explicitly disparaged it, I am convinced that I was born this way.

I'm from the old school . where it says you can grow up to be what ever you want to be , that's my opinion , and I could be wrong these days I'm ready to believe about anything

I am a chimera. At some point during my mother's pregnancy, my "womb-mate" and I merged. Physically, I was born male. My limbic system is completely female. I'm smaller than any of my siblings by close to 100+ pounds. I'm relatively short, standing about 5'8". My parents were expecting me to be either fraternal twins or a girl. My dad even bought a locket to give me when I turned 16 (he passed away when I was only 14 and mom died when I was 16). I had 4 siblings, two of which have died. My older sister (Rest in Peace, hun) knew about how I was. My parents told only her and she got my locket. Anyway, when I was 3 years old, mom dressed my as a girl for Halloween. I wanted to wear a scary mask with the little dress she bought for me. When she asked my why, I told her, "Because I'm a girl monster." I'm 54 now and still feel like a monster sometimes. As I get older and the testosterone level drops, I feel more at home in my body. Not 100%, but more at peace. *hugs*