Can we develop a gender identity  at any time in our life or is it something you are born with
I got mix up at about 11 or 12 it never stopped I all so have Aspergers is my problem part of that
    That is way I am looking for answers  I wish there was a good test to take

I must re read befor posting  I mant to say can we develop a gender identity issue at any time I our life or is it something we are born with

People recognize their problems at different times of life.  Often when you realize the issue, you often can look back and see indications from different times in your life.

Like fingerprints, different for everyone!

I agree with Devlyn Marie, it is different for everyone.  It depends on your immediate social environment, family attitudes, and lots of other things.

As we are in Crossdresser talk
I can say used to think it is just a fetish for me, but as time passed and I talk with crossdressers I doscover I want something different than they

Is it why we start cross dressing  it find our fem side or fills gap

I don't really think clothes are as much about painting "a fem side" as much as completing someone.  At least for me in particular, I don't "transform" as much as show just another part of me that may still incorporate any number of stereotypically masculine and feminine things.

I was paying much more attention to women's clothes around the age of 11.  Probably without coincidence, that's about when puberty kicked in, and it's probably natural that heterosexual men would start paying attention to things pertaining to women, especially since their clothes have traditionally been designed to attract the attention of men.  For these clothes to start off as a "fetish" early on is pretty understandable in that context.  So if you started getting excited about the clothes around this age, that's not surprising.

I think the idea of a man putting on "women's clothes" is sort of an interesting reaction, because what is probably the "intended" reaction is for a man to *look* at such clothes.  However, there is an interesting morality at play.  When a man's reaction to wanting to indulge in this aesthetic is to expect women to dress-up in this way, it diminishes women by reducing them to a role of serving the man's pleasure (not even necessarily consciously).  If a man's reaction is to instead take on the aesthetic for himself, I think it shows much greater responsibility.  Furthermore, if a man gains experience wearing these clothes and doesn't freak out so much when seeing them, he's more likely to keep a level head when he sees other people (mostly women) wear them -- and I think this is probably a good thing!

I started to question my gender at about 11-12 I did not start cross dressing until  about 16-17 I was late to start puberty I was 22-23 befor a hair grow on my face and look 18 -19 I am now 26 and my questioning is growing by the day   
For me I to cross dress to be the other me  not for a type of pleasure but I think some time is my mixup some thing to do with whanting clothes to fit right

I am a bit like you Andy. I have had many moments in my life where I questioned my gender and orientation. The latest has been the most productive. I bought some women's clothes as a curiosity. I put them on. I like them. I have begun to question myself. I am certain that I am gender fluid (for now at least ) as I feel different on different days for example on this past Sunday I spent most of the day thinking of myself as female (I even referred to myself by the feminine name I chose). And yet today I feel as manly as ever. Often lately though, I wonder if there have been others that started thinking their gender was fluid and realized it wasn't later or was everyone here certain from the start that their gender was not the one on their birth certificate?

This is hard to answer. I went through my whole life think I was a screwed up man with sexual hangups and crazy fantasies, and didn't come to the realisation that these things were quite normal for a woman until I was 35. You can find old posts from me on this thread about crossdressing under michelle.ch - did my gender identity develop at that time or was it always there and just suppressed deeply? I tend to believe the latter now, three days after SRS.

BTW love the avatar symbol from the Story of O, there was a chain of noodle shops that had the same symbol where I used to live in China I always used to wonder if they knew the significance, pity I can't remember the name of the shop so I can't find the photo.

I'd agree that we do not "develop" a gender issue, we sort of "discover" we have one, and this can happen at any age.

A gender identity issue and/or a cross dressing issue can develop at any time. Sometimes some CD individuals would turn transgender and even transsexual, while other would not. It is not clear why or why not at this time, hypothesis abound but no hard data exist to back any claims.

I think that the decade we were born in might also influence when we first come out to ourselves.   I was born in the 1940s in small town Dakota when even imagining your were a female born in a males body was not really imaginable until Christine Jorgensen hit the news.  I can't seem to match up my memory with researchable history, but in the back of my mind I recall seeing a poster on the bill board by the movie theater in town featuring the Christine Jorgensen some time between 1955 and 1960 because this was a time when I lived near a movie theater.   At that time the movies had news reels as well as cartoons.  This may have happened latter because according to Wikepedia the movie did not come out until 1970 which was after I graduated from college in the Dakotas.   I still would have been afraid to deal with the issue.

I was intrigued by the thought whenever it was, and it influenced my fantasies about changing physically into a woman.

At that time I was too shy and fearful to actually experiment with dressing as a female or even trying on female clothing and I never had the privacy to do so anyway.    Isolation, ignorance, and fear pretty much keep my desires in fantasy land.

Now days younger and younger individuals may feel that they have more freedom to experiment and test out their gender identification.   For me I felt that it would have been a death sentence for me to dress as a female except maybe on Halloween.   My fantasies were  encouraged because when I lived in my step dad's home town when he told me that freshman initiation in his high school required for the boys to dress up as girls.

Unfortunately for me we moved when I graduated from eight grade so I never found out if it were true.   But the thoughts about doing it kept my fantasies going.

It took the break up of my marriage when I was 53 years old to finally declare to myself that my male self was dead and I was now a female.   Outwardly for many years I dressed as a male in public but from that time on I wore bras and panties pretty much all of the time except when I might have to change clothes in public.  Now I don't own any male underwear or any other clothing which is specifically male except for shoes.   I wear men's shoes size 13 which makes it hard to find women's shoes that fit.

As I got older, I only sexually functioned when I imagined I was a woman,  but I did manage to father 6 children.

Now I dress as a woman and I am trying to relax and emote emotionally and move physically as a relaxed female rather than a stiff wooden puppet who is very guarded about the vibrations and emotional signals I send out.

Emotionally it is too stressful to emote as a male.

I started to cross dress after watching a movie  I think it is way I started to get at odds with my gender
Out I also remember that I was mixed up befor the movie was on TV (I was 11-12 at the time )
The move told me its OK to dress up as a woman
If it was not for work doing random searches I would be wearing woman's underwear all the time as I did at school and collage
I do not know is the movie started it but it helped my start cross dressing

PS : I do not just wear underwear  it is just easy to hide