As many of you know, I have another thread going about does it ever go away.

Some of the responses said, "I was born this way." So were we?

I think some of us really were. There's a lot of stories about us girls "knowing" very young. There have also been posts that said something like, "I prayed every night to wake up as a girl, and I was disappointed every morning.

There are others who got the desire a little later, typically around puberty. There is a sound scientific basis that the brain is "plastic", and can be retrained at certain points in like. There are also observations that children that learn a second language before they are 5 or 6 years old, can speak the language fluently and without an accent. Usually, if you learn a second language after 5 or 6, you can still learn to speak it fluently, but you'll probably always have an accent. This leads some to the conclusion that some language skills are learned early in life, and are difficult to impossible to re-learn later. My conclusion is that learning a language when you are very young encodes that ability into the hardware (or the firmware) of the brain. After the first 5 to 6 years, all other language skills are encoded into software, which is less capable than software.

There are a few times when the brain is more plastic than others, and skills learned at those times are encoded into firmware. My recollection is that the key brain growth periods are birth to 5 years, sexual maturity (say 12 to 15 years old) and the final big growth period is on the verge of adulthood (say 18 to 20 y.o.)

If you've read this far, here's my theory. When the brain is in its growth spurts (defined above) new capabilities can be encoded into firmware. One of those capabilities is developing the pleasure points. I think that the development of these pleasure pathways is how CDs develop a pleasure pathway to liking to be a girl. The flash for starting this could be something entirely random, like I would what it would feel like to try on sis's panties. If this turns out to be pleasurable, repeating this stimulus will build a pleasure pathway, like the Pavlov dog experiments. The other motivator could be something external, like you sis, your mom or you GF "makes" you wear girl's clothes, and that creates a very similar pathway.

I don't have gender dysphoria, But it would seem like that would fall under the category of "born that way".

Discuss, elaborate, or just comment on if some of this may fit your gender experience.