It appears like I might be a loner on this thread. The dressing came first; well actually the gender identity thing has never surfaced. As a young boy, I mostly ignored girls, had no interest in any of their toys or games and was always quite happy and glad that I was a boy. I had an older brother and sister, but the sister was somewhat of a tomboy, which meant that we were pretty much a family of three boys. Things changed somewhat in our teens as they usually do and my sister became a typical teenage girl, interested in boys and clothes, while I became fascinated by my pubescent attraction to girls, although I was far too shy to do much about it. Besides, my brother, who was my primary role model of boyhood did not bother with girls until he was much older, so I followed suit.

Crossdressing began when my pubescent curiosity and growing attraction to girls began to take over my thoughts. I began to notice all the things they did that were unlike anything boys did, including the unusual clothing they were beginning to wear. The only way to satisfy that curiosity, especially about the clothing seemed to be to explore my sister's things when no one else was around, and I began to try on things like bras and garters. There was a perfectly natural but unwanted sexual component to those early adventures, and I was always frustrated when it got in the way of my explorations. The sexual aspect gradually passed, but it was very difficult to escape the guilt and shame. Lack of opportunity severely limited my dressing, but daydreams and fantasies continued well into adulthood. I never felt any doubt about who and what I was, throughout all these years, and I never experienced any desire to actually be a girl. The desire to have a sexual relationship with a girl continued to grow stronger and stronger and was finally satisfied when I met and married my wife to be.

I don't believe that a desire to experience some of the superficial aspects of womanhood necessarily has anything to do with our awareness of our gender or confusion over our sex. At most, it might represent a slightly higher dominance of some of those elements of our personality that have been deemed by our culture to be feminine than is found in the average male. We are expressing our femininity, but in another time and another place, those same qualities might be viewed as more masculine than feminine.

Veronica