What's your favourite theory on why you crossdress?

[Curiosity666]

I am so much man that I have to crossdress to provide some balance to the force. Kidding

I don't believe gender is a binary. I believe we all fit somewhere on a standard deviation curve with varying degrees of 'masculine' and 'feminine' gender bias - all of them totally and completely normal in their now light.
For some there is a strong correlation between gender and birth sex; for others, not so much.
I do not have a strong match between my birth sex and my gender, so in order to express my particular blend of 'masculine' and 'feminine', I wear clothes that do not match my physical sex, e.g., I crossdress.
My earliest memories of wearing female clothes go back to the age of about five; far too early for sexuality to come into play. This leads me to believe that I was born with my particular predisposition to crossdress as I described above.

Seriously though, I couldn't have said the above any better. As to WHY gender is a spectrum and is not tied into sex, well that's a question that's a bit beyond my pay grade. If psychologists and researchers can't figure it out then I doubt anyone of us has a sufficient answer. Why let this worry you? We haven't got a theory unifying gravity and quantum, but we still use relativistic and Newtonian theories to keep satellites in orbit. Let's just roll with what we DO know, which is that we LIKE crossdressing. That's good enough for me.

[Cara Lacey]

The theory that I think is the best is: all fetuses start out as female and over time changes occur to those with XY chromosomes, sometimes these changes to the brain do not
happen in ways that are most common to a male fetus. Thus, the brain is a little different than the majority of males and responds differently to certain stimuli such as wearing women's clothes and other things usually more common to females.

In other words "I was born this way"!

I agree with this. We all start as female until that Y chromosome attaches. I believe it sometimes it doesn't catch all the way, so some males end up more feminine than others.

With all that has to go on, I'm actually surprised that there are not more cross-dressers.

[dana digs sweaters]

The Results!

[Robin414]

I'm an open minded, middle aged, gender fluid narcissist and I honestly look better as a woman...and what better way to experience life than to live half as you're 'birth gender' whatever that is...and the other as the 'opposite' right? 😉

[NewBrendaLee]

To me part of who I am

[Sarah Beth]

When my mothers was pregnant with me she kept rubbing her tummy going "be a girl, be a girl"

[Suzy Parker]

Early in the womb two eggs were fertilized, one male one female, these two eggs collided and became one. There you go. My other theory is that while pregnant mom was hit by lightning which scrambled the wiring in my fragile little brain.

[Katie01]

It started at a young age out of a sense of curiosity, a fertile imagination and fantasy. Many years later it still is about fantasy and escaping to be someone else for awhile. I think dopamine has something to do with it too .

[JaniceP]

All I know and remember, is when I was 5, I loved to observe the pretty dresses my next door neighbor would wear and her Girlfriend. We would play together A-Lot, games like teacher, Candyland as well as Dolls. It seems now in retrospect, that the girls and their mothers treated me as one of there girlfriends.
I was always the only boy invited to their birthday parties and for other All Girl outings they went on. I even participated in a sleepover or two, slept in the same bed as the other Girls.
Sorry to go on with this answer, but my theory is "I WAS JUST BORN THAT WAY."

My mom was a Drunk, so she didn't care about much.

[ClosetED]

Sarah asked the largest body of crossdressers in the world what I consider a serious question. Confucius and ReineD gave some very good thoughts. I too have given this deep thought and research. I am sure there is a genetic component and research does support this, but no specific gene as of yet. I will stick to CDing compared to TS which might have another layer. But there is no known gene for homosexuality and yet the percent population that is that way has been probably constant for centuries. Why do we like crossdressing? Why do we like hearing children laugh? Birds sing? Sunshine? A favorite color? Etc ... Certainly the environment we live in before we set down permanent memory affects the brain development in ways we cannot remember. But other men also get exposed to similar environmental situations and do not crossdress as a habit/hobby/lifestyle, so I think genetics (or a much stronger stimuli ) are involved. Brains reinforce connections that give us pleasure, even if society disapproves. So each of us may have some part of the CDing experience that gives pleasure. For me, I think it is related to my viewpoint that I did not get enough attention as I desired as a child and saw that females got more with less effort. I did not consider myself good looking and saw good looking girls who had all this attention paid to them just based on looks and not hours of work and toil and social skills. I can imagine my mind desiring to look like that, to feel feminine, would get me the easy way to my attention I craved. So many boys might try on a mother's pantyhose, but only those like us whose brains had rewired to enjoy that kept at it and reinforced it. Adding sexual release with it would also strongly reinforce it. Over time, we may have changed what we need or how we see ourselves, but most started out young.
Either way, this is something we know no way to undo and it is not harmful to or bodies compared to other pleasure seeking behaviors like alcohol or drugs. Yet those have 12 steps programs to help those behaviors but not for CDing. So it is different in some way.
Just some thoughts
Hugs, Ellen

[suit]

Sarah asked the largest body of crossdressers in the world what I consider a serious question. Confucius and ReineD gave some very good thoughts. I too have given this deep thought and research. I am sure there is a genetic component and research does support this, but no specific gene as of yet. I will stick to CDing compared to TS which might have another layer. But there is no known gene for homosexuality and yet the percent population that is that way has been probably constant for centuries. Why do we like crossdressing? Why do we like hearing children laugh? Birds sing? Sunshine? A favorite color? Etc ... Certainly the environment we live in before we set down permanent memory affects the brain development in ways we cannot remember. But other men also get exposed to similar environmental situations and do not crossdress as a habit/hobby/lifestyle, so I think genetics (or a much stronger stimuli ) are involved. Brains reinforce connections that give us pleasure, even if society disapproves. So each of us may have some part of the CDing experience that gives pleasure. For me, I think it is related to my viewpoint that I did not get enough attention as I desired as a child and saw that females got more with less effort. I did not consider myself good looking and saw good looking girls who had all this attention paid to them just based on looks and not hours of work and toil and social skills. I can imagine my mind desiring to look like that, to feel feminine, would get me the easy way to my attention I craved. So many boys might try on a mother's pantyhose, but only those like us whose brains had rewired to enjoy that kept at it and reinforced it. Adding sexual release with it would also strongly reinforce it. Over time, we may have changed what we need or how we see ourselves, but most started out young.
Either way, this is something we know no way to undo and it is not harmful to or bodies compared to other pleasure seeking behaviors like alcohol or drugs. Yet those have 12 steps programs to help those behaviors but not for CDing. So it is different in some way.
Just some thoughts
Hugs, Ellen

go get a comm-fee seat and log on to PBS > ORG search gean expression , cancer natuer nurturture all those key words. in there is one about how they poisoned rats, and the poison would show up expressing bad genetic issues in 90% of each breading cycle so after 100 generations it was gone.
Or they used a band cancer drug in low does and the next generation was fine. they reset how the dna was expressed, through rna ! what you can flavor geans ? yup !
seems the way things are expressed is a set of manipulable geans through the environment. >>>>WWWOOOHHAAA ! WTF ? ooh yea way more plastic than we thought .
oohh and plastics poison by way of mimicking estrogen more questions than answers ? ooh well its the ride not the desdination

[Robin414]

Early in the womb two eggs were fertilized, one male one female, these two eggs collided and became one. There you go. My other theory is that while pregnant mom was hit by lightning which scrambled the wiring in my fragile little brain.

Yep, 'Vanishing Twin Syndrome', it's real, google it!

For me might be the highly experimental radioactive 'Uber Makeup' the Germans were working on during WWII that my mom got her hands on... (those silly WWII German scientists, doing everything to the max, and playing with radioactive stuff with reckless abandon! 😉 )

[rian]

Dear Sarah
My best theory to why we became cross dressers is that it is part of our inner genes and DNA ..YEt it was strengthened due to social , biological , and cultural influences .......I think it is the other way round .....you should ask how we became imprisoned inside the men body ????

[CrossKimmy]

because I don't believe in discrimination

[lisa_vin]

Simply, because I love it! It feels natural........it soothes the soul, warms the heart, completes the puzzle and balances the equation!

[PrivateXDresser]

I've shopped in the men's underwear department and the women's lingerie department. The latter is much more fun and enticing!

[Shely]

It started at a young age out of a sense of curiosity, a fertile imagination and fantasy. Many years later it still is about fantasy and escaping to be someone else for awhile. I think dopamine has something to do with it too .

Katie01 You are quite right. imagination is the thing that got me going down this road. i have always like to make things and now i am making a woman in my likeness. it is also about the HUGE variety of women's clothes, types, colors, textures, styles, i could go on, and the Feel of them, (which releases the dopamine). Mens clothes have a couple of varieties, but nothing like women's. you can try on different things forever. and i intend to try them all. It's about the CLOTHES.

[Melissa in SE Tn]

Lisa vin said it better than I could ever say. Yes Lisa, it does balance the equation... Great point!!!

[Georgina]

I don't know other than having a strong attraction to the clothes.

[Karine]

Being a rationale person, I always try to figure out the why, even for crossdressing.
I would say that for me it is a mix of genetic and experience in my childhood.
Genetic, because as a little kid my brother used to dressed up as girl (me not at all).
Experience because:
As a kid:
- I used to play boys' games (football, video games (at this time it was more a boys' thing, biking) and girls' games (remember playing Barbie with my female cousin)
- I used to watch boys and girls' Tv cartoons with my sister.
As a teenager, once I saw a woman walking in heels in a movie, it must have triggered something in me and have developed some king of fetish for heels. But I do not really saw it as a kink thing, as ReineD said we engage in a lot of things. For me it is like why a football team became my favorite one. For me it was the emotion I felt during a particular game at a particular moment when I was young. This moment of the game is still in my head tweenty years ago.
My relation with my mom, with strong emotional bond but distant at the same time. We really look up to each other.
I have developed a strong curiosity for everything (it must be also a mix of genetic and experience) and never be afraid of crossing bondaries if i think they is no rationale reason for these bondaries.
Finally, with all that, it is almost logical if I became a crossdresser .

[stephambers32]

When I dress, I feel relaxed and more confident with myself.

[Ceera]

I really don't know for sure. What I do know is that I had feminine and gay impulses as a child, and I repressed acting on them as much as I could, out of fear that my father would reject me. It utterly would have destroyed our relationship for me to be anything other than straight. Still, I liked playing with neighbor girls more than playing with the boys, and I clearly recall when on vacations, preferring to play with the two girls who were daughters of the beach resort's owners, rather than playing with their brother. And I didn't mind at all that my mom, for purely practical reasons, insisted on teaching me to cook and sew and do laundry (like a girl) - because I wouldn't always have a mom or girlfriend or wife to do those things for me. She didn't dress me up or treat me like a girl. She just believed both boys and girls should learn what they needed to know to be self-sufficient. My sister learned to change tires on a car and do other 'guy stuff', too.

I do have one hypothesis that is interesting to consider, however.

Before I was born, my mom tried twice to have a baby. The first time was a single birth, I think a boy, and miscarried. The second was fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, and again miscarried. She sought medical advice and found one of her legs was shorter than the other, and the doctor suggested that the misalignment of her hips when she walked might have triggered the miscarriages. He had her put a lift in her shoe to even things out, and the next pregnancy, which was me, went fine. So did the birth of my little sister, the next time mom got pregnant.

So... what if the souls of both of those twins who didn't make it somehow got assigned to me? Could it be that I have both a male soul and a female soul, and just didn't split into twins in my own forming?

One body, two souls. Several cultures believe in that sort of 'two-spirit' existence as the reason for people who exhibit the traits of both genders.

For most of my life, I've let my male spirit control my body and life choices. Now I am allowing my feminine spirit to take control, for part of the time, and she loves it!

[Georgette_USA]

And I didn't mind at all that my mom, for purely practical reasons, insisted on teaching me to cook and sew and do laundry (like a girl) - because I wouldn't always have a mom or girlfriend or wife to do those things for me.

My mother believed my brothers and I learn to do all kinds of roles. Wasn't so sure she was teaching us to do things (like a girl) though. Not sure how one does those chores (like a girl) and not just doing them.

[Fiona123]

I accept the fact that I am transgender. For me, once I reached that acceptance, the "why" becomes less important.