For I suspect most of us, this life in its differing aspects such as our child-like interests, sense of dressing more as a little - for me little/middle feminine gurl- gender presentation for some and so on comes from within.
Certainly speaking purely personally it's something I've felt for a very long time in my so-called real life even if some individual aspects may of changed over time like my more recent feeling comfortable with the more overly feminine side.
The way we looked in on this has changed a lot over the years and from that just how I fit into the frame.
Talk around sex in the nineteen seventies was fairly straightforward in that you were either male or female.
The people we were aware of who in terms of social presentation who were at odds with that were Transexuals who being born of one sex, typically felt a sense of gender based dysphoria toward how they were expected to present and live by the standards associated with it such as males who associated and felt they were " a woman trapped in the wrong body".
Technically you cannot entirely change sex but the essence of transition that would include hormones and surgery to alter how they looked was it allowed them to live more as they felt - females.
People who did not and generally did not feel that sense of gender based dysphoria but who did enjoy presenting in traditionally female ways were originally called transvestites (literally people who changed attire) which changed to Crossdressers.
In the two Thousands there became a bluring in terminology taking Transexuals and Crossdressers under the umbrella terms Transgender(ed) or Trans for short.
It was political in that some felt Transexuals were seen as the "legit" and priveleged group and crossdressers being seen as "seedy" and a drag parady that didn't fit.
Personally I feel both groups while having thing in common are just different and effectily erasing the term transexual wasn't fair.
What comes under that Crossdresser heading itself varies although each individual varies.
Generally a person given to wearing the clothes and wishing to be more feminine while having a male sexual identity has no reason to be "made to" - it is how you feel, what you were will reflect more of what in wider society females do.It is something that we feel, something that we need perhaps in our lives not that we may not have balance this sometimes with more adult responsibilities like paying the bills and for a good many, needing to work too.
We own that sense of self, working it as best we can to suit our requirements and we're in control of that at all times. In other words we're responsible for our sense of little and where we take it.
This is I feel a bit different than what you may see elsewhere with regard to Adult Sissies where it's portrayed as being "Forced" although I'd say that's not an accurate description so much as the person doing that is more the one enabling, using psychological suggestions, a sense of wanting to be enabled in the subject as no one can in the everyday sense of the word make you do feel or do something you don't wish.
The person buys into it in other words and I suspect they may not have the confidence to just do it by themselves if that's really them.
As an Adult Sissy you really get off on humilation play.
It's a different feeling I think from any sense of, if you're transgendered, wanting wrongs in the form of gendered presentation to be put aright as being enabled to say attend school in the gender you feel.
There ARE bits around "sissy" that do apply very much to me and so in a good number of ways I am more of a sissy not least on the more "adult" side of it.
For me it's more being very happy with my gender role as a sissy gurl having no dysphoria with that wanting to wear skirts and play with girls more for some things as much as happy to play action games with boys.
That's just about you as the child back then, being able to be yourself, the gender you really feel, and to have the childhood involving play and schooling you deserved and all to often never got although through the miracle of age re-enactment you may well be able to recreate something of it such as at meets or in creating say school based role playing especially if it can be face to face.
All I know is I love some of these things, they made me feel more complete and very happy.
Maybe it does for you?