13-01-2014, 02:45 AM
Please feel free to shoot me down on what follows, or tell me that I may be making some sort of sense. Any and all comments welcome.
I have long been puzzled that it seems everyone else here who has gender issues seems to have at least at some stage a substantial interest in cross dressing or, more inclusively, dressing in a feminine style, while I have never in the past had much interest in it, and only now that I am achieving some degree of physical feminisation am I contemplating it as a possible practical issue.
Since Bryony first drew my attention to the writing of Anne Vitale, her theories have made a good deal of sense to me, despite some criticism from the mainstream all-or-nothing Transsexual Establishment. It seems generally accepted that the undifferentiated fetal brain is in the case of a male fetus exposed to male hormone during a phase of fetal development that seems to be centred on the sixteenth and seventeenth weeks, and this results in the brain being programmed so that during subsequent development (to some extent subject to circumstantial and cultural factors), it develops male characteristics, whereas the brain of a female, which is normally not so exposed, subsequently (again subject to extraneous factors), develops female characteristics. If for whatever reason this exposure fails to occur or occurs inadequately, then that male’s brain will to some extent develop as a female brain. Various things can cause such a deficiency. In my own case my mother contracted rubella in, as far as I can determine from quite good evidence, about the seventeenth week of pregnancy. As is now well known, if a mother contracts rubella it is also likely to be contracted by the fetus, with results that can and do cause serious birth defects at, usually earlier stages of fetal development.
In my own case I speculate that the male conditioning of my brain was interrupted by rubella, resulting in incomplete masculinisation. It seems to me that there may well be at least two distinct phases to the process, a first involving programming the brain so as subsequently not to develop the typically female traits it would normally develop, and a second phase involving programming the brain to develop typically male traits in due course. If these stages are part of a development sequence, then in my case I may have been programmed out of developing some feminine traits, while being short changed on the programming for male character traits; an inadequate level of male hormone or inadequate response to it throughout the process would presumably have the more across-the-board effects that seems more general. This could also explain why it took me so long to appreciate the gender related nature of my problems. Rather, I tended to feel that something was missing in my sexual development. I sought to feel what it is like physically to be female rather than simply to act female while I was physically male, if that makes any sense, and achieving some actual feminisation, e.g. developing breasts, gives me this more effectively and with less misgivings than anything I have done previously, without any psychological need to express my gender variance through clothing.
I have long been puzzled that it seems everyone else here who has gender issues seems to have at least at some stage a substantial interest in cross dressing or, more inclusively, dressing in a feminine style, while I have never in the past had much interest in it, and only now that I am achieving some degree of physical feminisation am I contemplating it as a possible practical issue.
Since Bryony first drew my attention to the writing of Anne Vitale, her theories have made a good deal of sense to me, despite some criticism from the mainstream all-or-nothing Transsexual Establishment. It seems generally accepted that the undifferentiated fetal brain is in the case of a male fetus exposed to male hormone during a phase of fetal development that seems to be centred on the sixteenth and seventeenth weeks, and this results in the brain being programmed so that during subsequent development (to some extent subject to circumstantial and cultural factors), it develops male characteristics, whereas the brain of a female, which is normally not so exposed, subsequently (again subject to extraneous factors), develops female characteristics. If for whatever reason this exposure fails to occur or occurs inadequately, then that male’s brain will to some extent develop as a female brain. Various things can cause such a deficiency. In my own case my mother contracted rubella in, as far as I can determine from quite good evidence, about the seventeenth week of pregnancy. As is now well known, if a mother contracts rubella it is also likely to be contracted by the fetus, with results that can and do cause serious birth defects at, usually earlier stages of fetal development.
In my own case I speculate that the male conditioning of my brain was interrupted by rubella, resulting in incomplete masculinisation. It seems to me that there may well be at least two distinct phases to the process, a first involving programming the brain so as subsequently not to develop the typically female traits it would normally develop, and a second phase involving programming the brain to develop typically male traits in due course. If these stages are part of a development sequence, then in my case I may have been programmed out of developing some feminine traits, while being short changed on the programming for male character traits; an inadequate level of male hormone or inadequate response to it throughout the process would presumably have the more across-the-board effects that seems more general. This could also explain why it took me so long to appreciate the gender related nature of my problems. Rather, I tended to feel that something was missing in my sexual development. I sought to feel what it is like physically to be female rather than simply to act female while I was physically male, if that makes any sense, and achieving some actual feminisation, e.g. developing breasts, gives me this more effectively and with less misgivings than anything I have done previously, without any psychological need to express my gender variance through clothing.
