Was I born a Cross Dresser?

[Carolynn]

Robyn, have you ever had your proportion of T vs. E checked? For most men, after about 50 years of age T production becomes signicantly less ("Male Menopause" though some men think it doesn't exist), and if you have a slightly elevated E then that could explain the resurgence of your interest in CDing after middle age, as well as others, and the lack of sexual component in it. I only suggest this because the decrease in T and the production of other homones in the brain in higher amounts with age are biological facts. I always had low T and therefore a low sex drive, and a higher E. By the time I had it tested prior to HRT by an Endocrinologist, my profile looked like a woman in menopause.

Just a thought.

Also take a look at the article I recently posted under the Transgender Issues topic of the forum. Its long, kinda technical, but veeerrrry interesting, and supports the biological origin of mental gender very well, as well as suggesting sexual orientation.

[Absaroka]

Once more we need to remember that being somewhat transgendered and being a crossdresser are sometimes two different things.

How might I have "learned" to be a crossdresser? Easy. As a baby and young child, like most children if they are at all fortunate, I recieved a lot of affection from my mom. Sitting on her lap being read to, being tucked in at night and so on. The child development books all agree (and I am more or less quoting from one of them here) that the most passionate love affair most people of any sex or gender ever have is when they are two, and is with their mother.

All well and good. Like your typical heterosexual male children sexual feelings became entwinned with this, which is also considered completely normal by all schools of child developmental thought.

It wasn't a very big step at all to feeling like my moms clothes felt and smelled like her, and so it was enjoyable to touch them. And for me another very short step to wearing them. Just like my daughters like to wear my flannel shirts. Except......and this is the big moment

Boys don't wear dresses and they most certainly don't wear lingerie and I knew that this had to be a secret, and it was a secret I was embarrassed and ashamed of. Combined with the early age sexual arousal that accompanied it, that gave it an almost infinite power and very soon it was hardwired into me.

My eldest daughter routinely wears her boyfriends underwear. (I haven't asked if he wears hers but it wouldn't surprise me either way) And she still wears my flannel shirts. But she doesn't need a forum to discuss it, doesn't think it means she has male tendencies, and never felt the need to hide it. Hence it has far less power, and also doesn't get discussed, the same as we don't sit around discussing gravity and other very important but entirely commonplace things.

Zari

[Robyn Katie]

Hi Sisters,

Absaroka, you're right—the name of the thread is "Was I Born a Cross-Dresser." So I guess I drifted the thread somewhat with my transgender observations.

My points about varying degrees of CD need at varying ages, though, still apply.

In practice, I wonder how many of us are strictly crossdressers and nothing else? vs. the number of us for whom CDing has some TG aspect?

Seems to me many, perhaps most, posts here on Crossdressers-Forum.com show a major transgender element that goes well beyond strict CDing. Though your perception may differ, of course.

Carolynn, interesting point about T and E proportion. The time may come when I want to look into it. But as I am happy in my present circumstances, and not contemplating any change, I think I'd rather not move on it for now. Thanks though for the suggestion, I really appreciate it!

Love, Robyn Katie

[Gaven McLaren]

This is a very interesting question.

I will have to say that I was. I remember being very young falling in love with a girl at church. Being that I can still remember her dresses I guess I was also in love with her clothes.

[Absaroka]

I think a great many people have a mixture of "feminine" and "masculine' traits. I for example am quite nurturing and quite emotional, also somewhat artistic. In our society these things are labeled feminine. However I don't have a lot of trouble expressing these traits. In fact on the artistic side I express myself musically in groups that are mostly men.

I don't know that sharing traits makes us transgendered or not-sure I have a "feminine" side but I've never felt I was really a woman. I was for example perfectly content to bottle feed my daughters and never felt I was missing anything by not able to breast feed them (my wife, like many women, had a love/hate relationship with breastfeeding, really enjoying it and feeling like she was nourishing our daughters from her body, but at the same time sometimes getting quite annoyed with just how often it needed to be done, or with having let down just at the sound of a baby crying a certain way.)

As for which traits are masculine and which are feminine, ever society in the world divides the two, and every society divides them differently. Some Native American societies, for example, considered torture and killing of captives to be strictly womens work, and the women were very good at it.

Zari.

[BettySmith]

I know its a cliche ............... but ..........at the end of the day, we as CD's have been dealt a set of genetic + environmental cards that underpin our personality/sexuality.

I am more than happy with who I am , a closet CD, and have come to terms with it now ,though I went through the guilt thing as a teenager.

Betty

[Bernice]

I feel more like I was supposed to be born a woman, and something happened along the way that altered my body, but not my brain. But we have to play the cards we are dealt, right?

I have never read about anyone ever consciously saying "today I would like to become transgendered", nor have I ever read of anyone saying "today I would like to become homosexual".

I may have been ten years old before realizing my particular predicament, but it was just that: a realization, and not a decision. So yes, I think I was born with this gift/curse.

Strangely enough, my mother complained bitterly about having two sons and no daughters. I say strange, because she was also quite bigoted and transgender-phobic. How much happier could she have been if she could only have accepted the fact that her wish had been partly granted?

Hugs,

Bernice

[Wendae]

Robyn Katie ....... At 68 I've gone thru the same changes. Those cycles go from one extreme to another.
I was a single child and my father was military and spent a lot of time away from home. I used to watch my mom get dressed and do her makeup. I loved the smell of the cosmetics and perfume she used. The feel and smell of lingere was overpowering. I would skip school while she was at work so I could put on her slips and panties.
I know that I always felt that the thing between my legs shouldn't be there. It didn't feel right and I wished it gone for many years. I probably would have tried to transition when I was younger but then I went thru a phase of horniness and that urge submerged. Raising a family sort of took priority. Now...well guess I'll just muddle thru. I really do believe I was a lesbian in a past life. Maybe next time I'll get it right.

[Anna Kate]

Can't remember when I didn't dress. My first solid remembrance is of age 8 or 9 when mom used me to fit a skirt she was sewing for my cousin. I didn't know if she knew I was using my sisters stuff (undies and all) but I was happy to be pinned into the skirt. I remember Mom and Dad having a rare, heated discussion that night. I never saw my cousin wear that green corderoy skirt. That was 60 years ago, so I guess I'll never know if the skirt got finished. I dreamed about it a lot, wishing it was for me. But you know, in the 1940's and 50's men were men and women were women. There was no internet to get information from, I thought I was all alone in my desires to dress.
And yunguns' ask about the good ole days!