A possible theory

[Henri]

Every now and then I speculate about the possible causes of being transgender, and not long ago I got an idea that I found to be intriguing. So it is said that one of the causes is different wiring in the brains of trans-people, such as if you are biologically female with a "male wired" brain, and vice-versa. Well, what if the cause was an extreme hormone imbalance of the ratio of estrogen to testosterone?

Basically everyone starts out as a female in the womb before the sexual organs become testes or ovaries (if I am wrong please correct me!). The eventual production of testosterone over estrogen will cause a person to become male, or estrogen over testosterone will make one become a female. But if there were a problem in development of the child, they might have a complication where they are unable to produce the correct amount of testosterone and develop into a male, and would be stuck as a female (or the other way around. For the sake of keeping this coherent I'll just use a FtM example). So basically, they'd develop with a male mind but the mutation (or whatever you'd like to call it) would cause the person to physically develop as a female. In a sense it could be seen as an extreme hormonal imbalance, but it would be very hard to diagnose because naturally you'd imagine a physical female would look like a female, and you wouldn't be able to see into the person's mind to say "Oh, you are mentally a male so you have a hormonal imbalance. Let's shoot you up with some man juice."

I got this idea because I'd heard of the fact that some men have an imbalance of testosterone in their system so they have to take it to keep it regulated (I imagine females probably can also have that problem with underproduction of estrogen). It is easy to spot an imbalance in these men because they are biologically male, so if the level of testosterone were low it would be very easy to know there was a problem. But if the person was truly a male but appeared female (an FTM transsexual), there would be no reason to suspect that there was any problem because having a higher level of estrogen than testosterone (in other words, an extreme hormonal imbalance) would make you look like a female. And we haven't yet developed a machine that can read minds and such. (I have a feeling I am not making much sense.)

Anyway I am sure there are many flaws in my theory, which is why I decided to post it on here. I don't have a very extensive grasp of knowledge on this area in general (the endocrine system) so I might have just defied a law of what is and isn't possible. I want to hear your opinions on whether or not you think this theory could be any sort of plausible explanation. Also, if you have any knowledge about these areas it'd be cool to hear that too!

[lancem27]

To my understanding that is one of the theories that is out there. I think it's possible but I think there may be more going on. Even with HRT many transpeople still feel dysphoric, i.e. need various surgeries to feel "complete."

[Jamiess]

There are several different theories. There is a book called brain gender that is pretty good if you like technical stuff. Nature v. nurture has long been debated. There is even a debate about trans-people brain differences. Some claim that those with gender identity are born with an opposing brain gender v. body sex others say that the hormones taken cause the brain to change. Unfortunately the brain has yet to be understood. I have always had low testosterone because of a genetic problem. Thank God! I took it for a while and hated it. Basically it come down to "What comes first the chicken or the egg".

[Jamiess]

By the way the theory you purposed is one I believe to be the strongest prenatal theorys, but some say that what happens after birth is more important . I think it is a combination of both, or I believe that there would be a lot more transgendered people.

[Just Kate]

In non-intersexed individuals, XY and XX specifically, the Y chromosome instigates the development of testes, and the 2nd X instigates the development of ovaries.  These sexual organs begin producing hormones as dictated by the DNA and by their type.  To oversimplify it, testes produce primary testosterone and ovaries do not produce as much testosterone.

Those hormones that are produced take part in the development of the fetus's entire body including their brain.  We assume that if the body produced contains the proper sexually dimorphic characteristics, then the brain did as well.  To date we have not found anything specific to the brain that would reject or encourage testosterone.  AIS and pAIS rejects it all over the body, not just the brain.  Because we haven't discovered any condition wherein the brain rejects or encourages testosterone, there isn't a credible "hormonal wash" theory with any scientific backing yet.

There could be one day, but as it stands people who claim GID have all sorts of hormonal baselines and the vast majority of them have brain structures like those of their anatomical sex (with variation like that in the regular population at large).

Still it is possible that there is an area of the brain that can get a condition that functions like AIS and rejects or encourages testosterone based development but only for that part.  We still haven't found such a condition yet.  The most likely answer is that there isn't such an condition, and there is another cause for GID.  Still it is possible.

[Pinkfluff]

The prenatal hormone theory is the one that makes the most sense to me from a scientific perspective, though biology isn't my area. I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but at a basic level I think it makes sense. Might be some other genetic factors involved too.

I compare it to hardware/software, since I'm an engineer. All the discussion, even in scientific circles, is always exclusively about the body's hardware. Well, brains have their own kind of software too. Some is instinct, some is involuntary lower functioning (what I call the body's firmware, stuff that governs heartbeat, etc.), and some is developed over a person's life. Naturally the physical state of the brain affects how this works, and science still has much to learn about brain hardware. I've never heard anything at all about brain software. Psychology is the closest we currently have, but it isn't quite the same.

So my theory is of course that some people are born with incompatible hardware. A person is not a body, but rather the consciousness, or soul if you believe in it, that exists in the body. Brains are just neural networks after all, so I think a computer is not a bad model for a brain. You would miss alot if you considered only a computer's hardware and none of it's software, and I believe that medical science does exactly this when it comes to people. Everyone is different though, and neural networks, either alive or artificial, do not work in the same way as a PC. You can't just install stuff on them, they have to learn it, so each person will in effect have their own programming language and OS. Thus, it is extremely difficult to compare one person's thought patterns with another's. Maybe that's why we can't read each other's minds.

And so, the point of my longer than intended post, is that the only way to really know a person's gender is to ask. You could guess based on physical attributes, but you could be wrong, and a person knows her/himself better than anyone else can.

[Debra]

The hormone imbalance theory I think works for the womb but not for "now".

I've heard horror stories of "testosterone therapy" for MTF women and I definitely dont think that's the answer.

Also I know my mom had a hormone imbalance and had to take estrogen to fix it...but she never felt "trans"....at least that I know of anyway.

[Jav]

All trans people ask themselves this exact question: why am I the way I am? I have my theory on this, and it's nothing scientific in the remotest sense. Its sort of a religious/.spiritual theory. I am an avid Buddhist practitioner, not a Buddhist theologian, so those who are, please excuse my half-baked theory. One of the key aspects of Buddhism is the theory of karma. Back in 1997 I came across a Tibetan Buddhist text "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" and it is quite specific in three places that people are reincarnated into specific sexes karmically. So if you were supposed to be born a man, but somehow biologically something goes wrong (for example, as in my case your mother suffers from calcium deficiency that requires her to take calcium supplements all the time, meaning that there is a high level of calcium in her body at the time of conception which is now proven to expel the Y chromosome), and you are born a female, karmically you are still experiencing the world as a male because that's your karma. I'm sure it's a little wild, but I had not had a backlash from the Buddhist institutions in my country alhtough I had very publicly promoted this view on a national television...

[fionabell]

Why be a man when you can be a trans?!

[lilacwoman]

the numbers don't add up to make reincarnation a reality.  plus we're all descended from Adam and Eve anyway.

I go with the prenatal brain not fully setting into correct sex mode as otherwise why would children instinctively behave in binary gender ways and the reparists like Money and Zucker produce so many unhappy suicidal failures?

[Jen72]

First of more opinion then fact as I might be off due to remembering things I learned 20 odd years ago or indeed is just opinion.
As for the hormonal influence to the fetus I have 2 things to mention on that one I recently learned.
1 the fetus starts as a female therefore the body starts this way but later the fetus is possibly subjected to testosterone at which time the body then forms into a male or the lack of T then stays female.  The big but here is that it is even later when another dose of hormones is given to fetus at another stage in pregnancy that give the mind its gender or rather with T get male lack of T get female or maybe increased estrogen little foggy on that detail.
2 my opinion would be if this is true and which most likely is the case then you would probably see a tendency of hereditary influences or even possible environmental effects could be effecting the mother which would also lead to brothers/sisters having a tendency to be trans or not.

As to the analogy of the body/mind of a human being that similar to a computer.
Similar in ways yes but one huge difference that can change things a lot which is humans run on bioelectricity which is chemical based.  Why does that make such a difference well here is why whatever environment we live in plus genetic predispositions (heredity) can alter the chemicals that flow in the mothers body thereby effecting the out come of the baby itself.  A good example of this is fetal alcohol syndrome.

As for the religious aspect of adam and eve whilst I do respect your religion/faith.  "What I have just said actually contradicts the adam and eve theory.  Why do I say that well Eve was born from adam yet we know scientifically that the fetus starts as a female.  So scientifically adam was born from eve.  All that being said those who wrote and or influence the bible itself or any religion really would be male dominated and they wouldn't put in said bible o by the way we are made from females that would not be very macho would it?

Once again just opinions and no saying I am right or you are wrong with ill intent I am sure we all get enough of that bull in the world we live in.

[Felix]

The high anecdotal reports of PCOS and autism and other hormonal or "male" problems in ftm's makes me think this is a deeply fundamental part of our biology. Having had persistent non gender conforming behaviors all my life, I would probably believe that anyway, but there's so much overlap for traits found in gay people, trans people, and female athletes that I feel like there's an invisible hormone slider and some of us formed with our hormones adjusted to extreme settings for our bodies. That train of thought too easily leads to arguments for fixing our mindsets instead of our physical selves so I try not to feed confusion by conceptualizing it that way.

I stopped researching this stuff a couple years ago because it was too triggering and I'm not calm enough to process it, but the theory I liked best last time I looked at any studies was the hormonal cascade thing in fetuses, which is basically what you described. It's cool that you brought it up. Even if we aren't scientists we can speculate usefully.

[Evienne]

Well that's what I've always been told, as more than just a theory, but an understanding as to why it actually is. So pretty cool that you thought of this, because this is like the top reason believed why trans exist. Definitely makes sense though. Hormones really make us who we are. So if it's messed up, it can mess up the person, creating a defect of which we as people call "transgendered." It's just as if DNA gets just one little mistake, it could either kill you, or give you a nasty disorder.