I really don't know for sure. What I do know is that I had feminine and gay impulses as a child, and I repressed acting on them as much as I could, out of fear that my father would reject me. It utterly would have destroyed our relationship for me to be anything other than straight. Still, I liked playing with neighbor girls more than playing with the boys, and I clearly recall when on vacations, preferring to play with the two girls who were daughters of the beach resort's owners, rather than playing with their brother. And I didn't mind at all that my mom, for purely practical reasons, insisted on teaching me to cook and sew and do laundry (like a girl) - because I wouldn't always have a mom or girlfriend or wife to do those things for me. She didn't dress me up or treat me like a girl. She just believed both boys and girls should learn what they needed to know to be self-sufficient. My sister learned to change tires on a car and do other 'guy stuff', too.

I do have one hypothesis that is interesting to consider, however.

Before I was born, my mom tried twice to have a baby. The first time was a single birth, I think a boy, and miscarried. The second was fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, and again miscarried. She sought medical advice and found one of her legs was shorter than the other, and the doctor suggested that the misalignment of her hips when she walked might have triggered the miscarriages. He had her put a lift in her shoe to even things out, and the next pregnancy, which was me, went fine. So did the birth of my little sister, the next time mom got pregnant.

So... what if the souls of both of those twins who didn't make it somehow got assigned to me? Could it be that I have both a male soul and a female soul, and just didn't split into twins in my own forming?

One body, two souls. Several cultures believe in that sort of 'two-spirit' existence as the reason for people who exhibit the traits of both genders.

For most of my life, I've let my male spirit control my body and life choices. Now I am allowing my feminine spirit to take control, for part of the time, and she loves it!