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Thread: Suppose it is genetic ...

  1. #26
    Aspiring Member jacques's Avatar
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    hello Steffi,
    I think it is definitely genetic - women obviously think we are superior partners for making babies!
    luv J

  2. #27
    Princess Candice candykowal's Avatar
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    My situation was a bit different as I believe my upbringing and medical condition during childhood, made me who I am.
    But I have several like minded friends whose fathers and siblings are TG, to one extent or another.
    I do believe, as others suggested, genetics plays a big part.
    Candice Coleen Kowal ....all my friends call me Candy!

  3. #28
    Member KristyPa's Avatar
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    I've always wondered why me a 5-7 year old would want to wear women's cloths. It's never bothered me that I do, to this day I've never understand why I do but I love it.

    I can easily understand later when I became sexual, women and women's cloths are so hot but I was doing it when I was 100% innocent to sex and lust for women. I've wondered if anyone else in my family might be a dresser and really don't think so although I doubt any of them would guess I do.

    In my close family of one sister and two brothers I'm hands down the easiest to get along with and most thoughtful, wonder if that would have any bearing on liking the feminine side of my personally. Must not seeing how my sister can be somewhat nasty and she a female, haha.
    Last edited by KristyPa; 03-07-2021 at 09:28 PM.

  4. #29
    Member Lori Ann Westlake's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jacques View Post
    I think it is definitely genetic - women obviously think we are superior partners for making babies!
    I couldn't help responding to that comment. My wife and I have "messed around" at times when I was "dressed." Or half "dressed" anyway. And once she confessed to me that she thought our daughter was conceived on one of those occasions. My wife called her "Lori's baby." What a compliment!

    Genetics, epigenetics, what the heck. Not forgetting intrauterine "accidents" of various kinds, regardless of genes. In particular the hormonal environment in utero affects the development and gendering of the brain. Any kind of variation can happen. After all, Darwin's whole point was that evolution depends on random variation. Otherwise there would be no "evolution." We would all be viruses at best, just a fragment of RNA; not even "DNA." And variations don't necessarily die out. Many of them are keep reproducing, possibly for precisely the reason Jacques was quoting above (hee hee!), and sometimes for more complex reasons involving survival benefits to collateral lines of inheritance. Then too, some of the same variations keep cropping up randomly again and again, like Down syndrome for instance.

    Anyway the bottom line for me is that if I've got some "feminine traits" that make me a crossdresser, I'm far happier to know I was born with them, through one physiological mechanism or another. Would I rather not have been? It's too late to say that now. I'm just "me," and I've nothing to complain about in the end, though it was awkward having to hide my crossdressing in my teens, among other handicaps. ("Handicaps" can be anything including having to accommodate two wardrobes instead of one.)

    Still, I have to recognize that compared with meeting the human norm ("straight," "cisgender" and other newfangled terms for old and timeless things), being a crossdresser, still more for anyone transgender, or gay for that matter, is a "tougher row to hoe." How much worse it would be if we had to torture ourselves by constantly asking "Who was it that made us this way? Was it our parents, the way they treated us? Or someone else? Who was to blame?" And there have been "theories" about that, which I think are mostly nonsense. Like the famous one about gay men being the product of a cold, distant father and a smothering (or overcompensating) mother. As for my being, not gay, just a little more feminine than most men, I could have blamed my mother, who I think would have preferred to have a girl. Did she steer me in a "feminine" direction?

    Who needs to be bothered by questions like that?--especially if they feel these problems have wrecked their lives (which thank goodness mine hasn't been). What if I blamed my mother for "making me" what I am by her behavior? What would be the use of it, except to foment anger and bitterness she never deserved, because it was never "her fault." She might have preferred a girl, but I know she loved me anyway, so no problem with that. Had I been born drug-addicted or with fetal alcohol syndrome, I suppose I might have blamed her for that, but none of that was remotely true. Genes, on the other hand, we have no control over. So I'm far happier to say, with Popeye the Sailor Man: "I Yam what I Yam." I was born this way. And that's enough for me.

  5. #30
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    I think I would've always tried CD at some point in my life but is it genetic? I was curious from age 10 and tried on some of my sister's old clothes but didn't embrace it until now at 43.
    If my son becomes curious I'll be happy for him and maybe I'll know then.

  6. #31
    Aspiring Member kellyanne's Avatar
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    Exactamundo

  7. #32
    Member Lori Ann Westlake's Avatar
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    I want to add in response to Stephanie47's post that the role of hormones is intriguing. (I hope I'm not boring anyone by ruminating at length on this, although the practice here seems to favor shorter posts.) It seems to me that crudely we could place most crossdressers into one of two categories, depending on which of two great milestones in life the desire first appeared: birth or puberty.

    In the first category, some people say they felt the urge to try on dresses and other girls' clothes as children, or that they always wanted to be a girl. For these people, presumably the "gender identity" part of the brain has been feminized right from birth, to a greater or lesser extent, and they're likely to be transgender to one degree or another.

    In the second category, those like myself--and Stephanie--found the desire to crossdress only emerged (with a bang, and with somewhat different motives) around puberty, when all those hormones started kicking in. Our brains may be feminized somewhat, but usually to a lesser degree, and we're likely to end up being "mere crossdressers" (no matter how compulsive!) rather than truly transgender.

    Admittedly there are other, psychological factors that influence our development--or more to the point, inhibit it! Social pressures especially, or whatever it is that makes us feel we're "strange" or "wrong" or "not like other people" and "shouldn't be this way." So I'm sure a number of gender-related feelings and desires can be suppressed until (and unless) we reach a stage of self-acceptance, in which case we can "let these feelings loose" and explore them. This may happen at any stage of life. So it doesn't altogether surprise me to hear of a male at age 35, say, finding it "dawned on him" that he wanted to become a woman. I picture him (or "her") as struggling gallantly to live up to his expected "male role" in life, so intently that even the awareness of contrary gender-related feelings and desires was suppressed below the level of consciousness--until at some point in life the pressures eased up, or simply became intolerable, and the transgendered feelings were released, burst forth and bubbled to the surface of consciousness.

    While I'm not transgender, just a "common-or-garden variety" crossdresser, I could bear witness to something similar myself. As I mentioned on the "finding acceptance" thread, it wasn't until I reached a stage of self-acceptance that I felt able to explore certain "gendered" aspects of my personality, and felt freer to be "Lori." Up until then, I'd been struggling at times with all the feelings of awkwardness and guilt that so many do about crossdressing, and I'm sure I was inhibited from digging into those aspects any further.

    But at least I was aware of the internal struggle, as no doubt Stephanie has been. That's a point worth mentioning, because for me at least, crossdressing was largely eroticized and sexualized, in the beginning anyway, and sexual drives are intense and overt. It's hard not to be aware of them. "Gender identity" issues can be far subtler and harder to define or put our finger on. So the "gendered" part of "me" that is Lori couldn't "come out" more fully until I reached that stage of casting off the inhibitions. In the same way, I can imagine how someone whose main challenge is being transgender could still suppress that part of themselves entirely until they reached a certain stage of "release." That's in contrast with others who "always knew" about the "woman within themselves."

    That explanation is all very well, yet I still feel surprised to read of some people who "suddenly felt the desire" to crossdress at the age of 45, say, or even later--which may or may not be "gender-related." And somewhere (I can't recall where) I recently read of a man who unexpectedly found homoerotic desires "popping up" at the late age of 65 or so. (Yes, I know "sexual orientation" is separate from "gender identity," but it's still all related to the gendering of the brain.)

    I have to wonder what causes this "late eruption." Especially if these folks had zero awareness of any previous "inner struggle" with feelings of this kind, and they just sprang up from nowhere. It's just as puzzling to me as it must be shocking and disconcerting to them.

    What exactly is going on there? Is it, as GretchenM suggested, about some gene getting abruptly "turned on" by some life event, or by some internal timer going off, and whoops! at the click of a switch, suddenly you're a crossdresser! (Or even "gay"--"bi-curious" at least, like the person I read about.) Possibly; who knows?

    At the same time I can't help wondering, as Stephanie has, about the role of hormones--particularly testosterone--in all this. It's well established that testosterone levels rise in response to competition and threats, and war and mortal combat are the ultimate example. So it's natural that testosterone levels would surge when faced with battle, as Stephanie was--and suppress any "softer, feminine" thoughts of crossdressing.

    However, we also know that testosterone levels tend to decline, slowly and naturally, as men age. Among other things, some men who were irascible, pugnacious or abrasive in their youth, fueled no doubt by excessive testosterone, have been said to "mellow with age" as testosterone declined to normal. So could it be that in some men, testosterone was also suppressing certain latent "feminized aspects" of their brain, and as those hormones slowly ebbed away with age, that "feminized part" was liberated to emerge suddenly as an unexpected urge to crossdress in middle age or even later?

    Well, it's an idea. Anyway "we are who we are"--and sometimes "we are who we become," especially when whatever made us "become" that way was unknown, unexpected, and beyond our control. It's up to us to "ride the wave," that's all.

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