What makes us - us?

[ReineD]

It has clearly been shown now that we are all one gender at conception the male develops from the female and that's why some of us have different wiring , our gender and sex can be defined in so many different ways.

Teresa, in the interest of accuracy, you need to read about sexual differentiation in humans 101:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual...tion_in_humans

All fetuses are "its" when they first form, not female. Sexual differentiation occurs during the second month of incubation and it is determined by chromosomes. Your chromosomes are determined by your father. If one of his X chromosomes pairs with your mother's X during sex, you will be a girl (XX) and begin to differentiate as a girl (uterus, fallopian tubes) in the womb during the second month. If one of your father's Y chromosomes pairs with your mother's X (XY), you will be a boy and begin to differentiate as a boy (testes) in the womb also during the second month. After that the limbs form, the organs, etc.

[jennifer0918]

My story started when I was 8yo, I loved jelly shoes back in the 80s .I would wear them love the way they felt. Then I wanted to have breast so but you know what no and I mean no one ever tought me how to tuck.I started tucking without knowing that this had a name.From that just felt right normal I felt soft delicate I felt like a girl.I love dressing and will always do it I like it and I'm ashamed of it .

[Stephj]

Like others have said I am just a guy I love riding my motorcycle fishing reading books but I enjoy wearing a bra and panties have since I was 8 and before that loved to look at them and feel them in the store like others said no one but a few people no about me you would probably never know I really don't act very masuline or femanity but I have been told I walk like a woman but I am just me I have come to apcet it I am this way

[Teresa]

Reine,
Yes I did realise that I slipped up I should have amended that mistake.

Krisi,

This is becoming ridiculous , I'm not TSs so my comments aren't welcome in the TS section , now your suggesting we should label ourselves as to what status our CDing is.
I am also a crossdresser but it's an outward appearance to satisfy an inner need that I feel 24/7, like I said no ebb and flow, I feel I could dress 100% but have chosen to stay in my DADT marriage and accept my responsibilities as a husband and father to my family and I wouldn't insult my family by calling my CDing a hobby. As I've also said before hobbies don't cause a person to consider ending their lives.

I don't have a problem if you consider it's pleasurable hobby for you and maybe your wife but please stop thinking that applies to every CDer who contributes on the forum, it's much deeper for some of us.

[sometimes_miss]

Disclaimer. These are MY OPINIONS. If you don't like them, create your own by going and reading hundreds of books and papers, and watching every video presentation that you can find, on psychology just like I did. Feel free to disagree, that's what learning new things is all about. But I won't argue about it.

I haven't found any hard core scientific evidence that it was one specific part of our brain - or some event in our lives that caused this - it just who we are.

The whole search for the 'one, definitive reason' why we crossdress is a waste of time. Why? Because there isn't 'one' reason. There are lots of them, and it can be something different for each one of us. So trying to narrow it down to one and only one thing, will only drive you crazy. It's not necessarily genetic. Or hormonal. Or conditioning. Or chemical. And maybe it's not due to a single, life changing experience. Because it can be one or more or even maybe ALL of those things, or even something else.

AND THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. That's the big issue here. We're fighting thousands of years of other people's feelings of what WE should be to make THEM happy, all because THEY'RE uncomfortable with men who dress/behave as women do.

My first memory of dressing like a girl was when I was 6 or 7

I believe that the age when we start doing it may be significant. My own hypothesis is that our sexual self identity is somehow 'finalized' at some point in our development, exactly when, no one is sure. Others have suggested that we have a sense of being either male or female very early (3 to 5 y/o); this is seen in SOME transsexuals, knowing that they are in the wrong sex body. Yet others don't experience it until much later. My opinion is that it happens somewhere around puberty, much like our linguistic accent patterns, and I believe this because it seems like that's when it happened to me (yet, without other people to confirm this experience in other TG's, there's no way to know). Others suggest that our minds aren't 'fully mature' until we're around 25. Of course, none of those is always exact, as people develop at different rates. As we know, one person will start puberty at 10, another, at 17. So it is with our minds. There's no exact age that is applicable to everyone.

I've searched through my past for a single incident in which my thinking and feeling was significantly altered and come up with nothing.

There still might be something there. We don't always attribute past events and experiences as being important to us, so recalling them isn't always easy. Something may not have seemed to have an impact at the time, but perhaps it was there.

The old 'can't see the forest for the trees' quotation is probably very accurate for us.

When I was very young my sisters dressed me in my aunt's corset as a joke. I still have a vivid memory of that time and from then onward I loved to dress up and did so as much as I could. Was there something there that this incident just catalyzed?

Might simply be your reaction to receiving attention as a kid; you associate wearing female clothes with some type of positive feedback. And it may not be what you think; for, even though they did it as a joke, even if you were embarrassed by it, perhaps deep down, you may have felt as if they accepted you more that way (dressed as a girl), so there will forever be a little bit of influence in the back of your mind telling you that it's beneficial in some way to dress as a girl. It doesn't have to be a lot; it only takes one little slightly positive thing to create influence.

I used to care, probably thinking if I could figure it out I could change it.

It's not about changing the behavior. That's the big thing that western medicine won't tell us. They let us believe that once we figure it all out, we'll be 'cured'. But all that really happens, is that we understand it and can deal with it better. The feelings will always be there.

The reason to figure it out, is to find out what the underlying reason is for our crossdressing. Because until we can address the original desire, we're subject to all kinds of feelings that we can't explain, and so can't stop. consider what happens when you are hungry. If you didn't know that you have to eat to fix the feelings of hunger, you'd always feel uncomfortable. So it it with crossdressing. Once you understand what it is that drives you to do it, you'll be better able to resolve the problematic feelings that go along with it.

[Julie Gaum]

Some responses do touch on a few of the possible reasons for CDing while others (like the hobby idea) are just in denial. Consider that out of a hundred male children who, out of curiosity, try on a mother's or sister's clothes perhaps four become CDs? Commonly called the "trigger" that sends us on this path. Why? One or some of these theories apply to us individually but we - despite all the therapists - will never know for sure. Reine mentions one of the valid findings - chromosome unbalance - groups of genes composed of DNA and proteins become the Xs and Ys as she explained; the brain becomes hard-wired before and even during the first few formative years of life - call it imprinted just as a chick will at a few weeks old follow and obey its mother - environment may become an influence in this wiring; a recent idea with considerable merit involves a big word "synaptogenisis" and neural pruning.
If you really want to learn the details regarding the above, and so much more regarding our world please visit www.neverclimbedhismountain.com and click on "Blogs" - there are now 74 complied over recent years.
Good luck on your search
Julie

[Teresa]

Sometimes_miss,
I'm going to go along with 100% to your reply to Kimberly Adams. I call it tying all the lose ends together, the relationship with a GF, what a certain style of clothing represented, what it meant to wear it and the unexpected sexual outcome at the age of 8-9. From that day on I had a gut feeling or need , I can't say if GD also started at that point but looking back becoming bi-gender probably did.

I'm also with you 100% on your last paragraph . I've always known that how my CDing started was the key along with the long term dreams I had at that time but it's taken a long time and a lot of pain to put all the answers to it . To me it was like going round in destructive circles, believing something one day and the next having the guilt and shame to make me disbelieve it. I eventually found counselling was the only way to break the chain, as my first counsellor told me I have to stop living my life on assumptions, it's mentally destructive.
To me you owe it to yourself to find what makes your CDing tick, it's the only way you can come to terms with and move on, you're then in a better situation to explain it to others. OK that varies depending on your DADT situation, I had the problem it was for me to sort it.

[CherylFlint]

If you fight it it'll drive you nuts.
Since it's the way you are, why fight it? Life is a lot easier if you look at yourself in the mirror and see yourself as you REALLY are and not pretend.
What I mean is when you're "dressed" you're not "drab", if that makes any sense.
When I'm "drab" I'm "Cheryl not dressed".
Go with the flow and
HAVE FUN!
Stay safe.

[Tina_gm]

To what Sometimes miss was saying about the when..... I think for at least a very very large percentage of us, IF not all of us, we are born with TGism. Why some are feeling it right from some of their 1st memories, while others don't feel any of it sometimes till their later years?? I would think a trigger needs to be pulled. Each person having their own trigger. Possibly those who are closer to or who are TS might be more prone to feel differently from the very beginning, but then again, look how many didn't realise how deep it goes for them until middle age. They knew it was something, but didn't know what that something was in many cases just on this forum alone.

How we are raised makes a difference too I would imagine. Even though some trigger has been pulled, if the family unit is strongly against such alternative lifestyles, or the person lives in a more conservative/rural setting, chances are even though the trigger has been pulled and maybe they do experience the feelings of desire to be different, they do not let themselves experiment. They deny their desires to themselves, and of course to everyone else for a long long time. Parents who are not so conservative, have many different types of friends, live in more of an urban area, the person will more likely seek out what their desire is as there is not as much of a society force or other forces at work to prohibit the desires.

As society is becoming more accepting, there are more people coming out and much sooner. One reason why many older people may be likely to think that society is somehow creating transgender, since back in their day it was so much more rare, society is only creating less prohibition of it. The percentage is likely the same now as it always has been.