[Samantha Rogers]

Clara, Samantha, Lisa, thanks for collectively saying what I would have liked to say, and saying it so much better. I can relate to almost everything you all say, and my background is even more diverse (though it had characteristics corresponding quite closely to those that you, Samantha, listed in another thread as wanting to avoid - no offense, I've tried quite hard to escape some of it myself, and found myself labelled as poor relation and scholarship boy). But as I have probably said too many times already, I always seem to find myself as odd-person-out in that almost everyone here is or has been a cross dresser, and I never really have been.

If I have been right in thinking that what I'll term the gendering of my fetal brain was fouled up by my mother getting German measles in the middle of the process, I seem to have landed up inadequately programmed both for masculinity and for femininity, leaving a kind of mental hole in the middle. Although having a male body, from puberty until recently subject to normal male hormonal urges on the physical side, I have found it difficult to adapt to environments which expect typical masculine behaviour patterns, ie behavioural masculinity per se, and although I would like to have been born with a female body, and I actively seek to experience what it would be like to have such a body, there has been no major urge to pursue behavioural femininity on its own.

Now that I am experiencing a limited degree of feminization of my body, I begin to feel that some proportionate degree of feminine presentation and dress may possibly be appropriate, although whether this feeling is brain-driven or phytoestrogen driven, I don't know. I do know that I'm much more at peace with myself and those that I love, and I'm sure that PM has something to do with that.

Welcome to the rabbit hole, Annabel!
Many seem to find that initial reasons for joining this path gradually expand to include aspects never originally contemplated or intended.