Nature vs Nurture? Is CDing genetic, or learned (or both!)

[Sue101]

I suppose my point is that I feel that you have placed an over emphasis on the "pushing away from masculinity" stuff while brushing off the pulling towards femininity.

Yes it probably does come across that way. I am having to fight against the prevailing wind in which popular theories on emphasize only the attraction factors so I end up shouting louder to make myself heard. I do agree it is not necessary there has to a repelling factor but I feel in most cases both factors are present. Moreover in these cases it is the factors repelling us from particular aspects of masculinity which kick-start off the entire process. Its significance is to help explain why a sudden feeling of attraction to femininity apparently occurs out of the blue for boys who are otherwise typical boyish boys.

It's more accurate to say that masculinity and femininity are MENTAL constructs that are affected by the social setting.

Are they not the flip side of the same coin. People create society and society's rules are imposed on the people who created the society. It is a revolving door where individual's wants are assimilated into the mixing pond and then an aggregate behavior is constructed that everyone has to agree to align themselves to. The problem is the aggregate behavior can be influenced by other factors like superstition and the need for the society to survive in competition with others. This ends up skewing the social behaviors into very artificial areas.

Some males have that thing in them to behave in a feminine way as females

What does this mean? Where does this feminine thing come from? You are correct to say siblings can have very different personalities but that is the key to explain why one can end up masculine and the other feminine. Despite sharing the same environment our unique personality traits will interface differently with the environment. So one brother may be up shy and submissive and end up developing into a crossdressers while his outgoing brother does not.

There are examples of twins where one brother is a crossdresser and the other not. These cases rule out the possibility that genetics or hormone washes as both have the same exposure. What we do know about twins is they always have unique personalities so they end up being as distinct a person as anyone else.

It is not environmental factors that create crossdressers but the interaction of unique personalities with the environment and the resulting feelings produced from that process which then have to be aligned with social gender expectations.

If it was something that was the result of environmental factors, we should observe such strong feelings only after years of conditioning

I disagree, you can instantly fall in love with something that you have no prior experience of. Happens all the time even if you are conditioned against something. For example a child raised as a vegetarian may be conditioned to find meat detestable but one day may break the conditioning, eat a hamburger and never look back.