[AnnieBL]

In my childhood, nothing to do with gender variance was even on my radar, but in retrospect there were straws in the wind. When I was just under two years old it is of record that I raided and aplled my mother's make-up, then in very short supply because of WWII. This was probably only imitative and of no significance, but at 8 I made an unsuccessful attempt to remove my penis by banding, and up to 7 most of my friends and play companions of the same age group were girls. I can only remember two boys - one emigrated with his parents when I was 5 and the other my mother considered undesirable since he taught me to steal. As for the girls, one my cousin, I'm still in contact with four of them, and one I'd still classify as a good friend. Various other things I have mentioned in posts before. Then at 17 I got a crush on a 13year old boy, one of those who develops a transitory but hauntingly feminine beauty, and this convinced me for many years that I must be homosexual. In due course I found that there were various things, none of them really satisfactory, that made me or made me think I was feeling like a woman, and that this was something I needed. It took me a long time to realize that my sexual preferences did not lie at that end of the sexual orientation spectrum, but that I could not seek relationships in a male manner (not a major problem in the gay world), and needed to rely on my would-be female partners making the running - which is a major problem. So many societal conventions and activities require the male to lead, while I am wired to follow. I hated dancing and was never able to do it (in the styles then conventional, for this reason). I am most fortunate that the love of my life was able to engineer a date with me and much later to set me up to make a proposal. She hates being led, hates dancing like I do, and is feisty to complement my own lack of aggression. While I have long known about my desires to feel like a woman, it is only comparatively recently that I have become aware of more effective ways to fulfil these desires to some extent.