Why are we like this?

[helen2010]

From what I have read there is a biological basis for gender differences and that it is caused in utero where the mother is subject to a stimulus approximately 1 month after conception which causes an abnormal hormone flow (e.g. from significant stress) which genders the brain in a manner which is inconsistent with the gendered body (male brain female body etc).  A lot of this is still theory but does appear to be supported by post mortem (albeit small sample sizes) brain studies.

The more topical and emotive question to me is whether a woman is a social construct (as Germaine Greer and many sociologists do in fact argue) and that the behaviours, expectations and treatment accorded to them by society cause gendered differences in behaviour.  Interestingly there is now a fairly robust body of research from UCLA on Affect Regulation which posits and provides support for the theory that a brain and personality responds to its environment (e.g. interaction of a baby with its mother etc), that hormonal flows are triggered, new pathways form and brain development follows.  It seems to me that research in this area would suggest that nature (biological reasons) and nurture (social interaction) therefore combine in human development.

At a personal level I admit that I am more receptive to and supportive of a biological explanation for my tg nature.  It means that I am not broken and cannot be 'fixed' by appropriate counselling.  Indeed the immediate and profound impact of hrt supports this explanation and is often quoted as a valid diagnostic tool in treating tg folk.  Taking low dose hrt (in my case an AA and E) stimulates physical changes which appears to seek to make my brain, hormones and body more congruent.  How I deal with this is then a personal choice - and indeed subject to all of the tradeoffs facing an individual considering a full transition.  For me a more androgynous presentation combined with my female brain and more appropriate hormones (even if low dose) has been immensely beneficial and at this stage is enough given the profound benefits that I have felt, so I am not contemplating a full transition.

All of the above has at times proved confounding and confusing.  This coupled with the widely accepted notion that brains and identity are not necessarily binary has left me with a lot of choice.  Only by conscious engagement with and seeking to understand my core identity or self have I been able to plot  a path and direction that works for me. 

If the above ramble suggests an overly analytic and structured approach then I am indeed guilty.  I tend to live in my head rather than in my heart but I am aware of this and am improving in this area.  The result is that I am overly influenced by nuance, rarely accept an easy or obvious answer so for me the excitement is now in my journey rather than in reaching a final destination because I suspect that for me there isn't a binary outcome and my fate and blessing is to continue to change, grow and transition.

Safe travels

Aisla

[TRyan]

I really like how you articulated this Aisla.  It's excellent. Do you have any book recommendations? 

The hormone exposure in utero makes sense to me.  It makes me wonder if there are certain critical periods in utero where hormones have a larger impact on the development of gender.  This is a weird analogy but baby ducks have a certain critical period in their development where they recognize who their mother is and will follow "her" around.  If, during this critical period they are exposed to someone other than a "mother duck" they will bond to that object even if it's not a duck and follow that person around. 

I am definitely more supportive of a biological explanation for all of this. I've spent so much money on therapy--analysis, everything. Nothing helped or even got to the amount of shame I felt growing up. 

I like you're analytic and structured approach to this. It's been quite helpful.

[helen2010]

TRyan

A quick repost first "Your views are converging with mine and they are being continually reinforced by hrt, counselling, conscious choice, life experience and an increasing number of writers  and the latest views from integrated rather than binary (nature v nurture) thinkers.  I have always enjoyed Kate Bornstein and her latest workbook is no different - it strongly supports her views on gender fluidity and choice. 
Perhaps more impactful has been a massive body of work from Allan Shore developing and applying his theory on affect regulation and the origin of self et al.  His ability to bring together neurobiology, developmental neurochemistry, behavioral neurology, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, developmental psychoanalysis and infant psychiatry is truly impressive.  As a layperson I have found his argument that the sense of self and therefore gender is a combined neurobiological-social-emotional expression resonates and aligns with my view that chemical/structural (hrt/brain structure) and environmental (socialisation) interact in a constantly changing dance that we can either choose to fight and suffer stress or dissonance or choose to embrace and evolve."

Shore's various books are available on Amazon - his first,  Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development by Allan N. Schore (May 13, 1999) is pretty heavy but it is a good place to start.  Re in utero stress and the timing of brain gendering is discussed in numerous studies and only occurs in a precise window a few weeks after conception.  This should be easily googled.  Useful research articles which have just been released for free are also available from Routledge Journals which "proudly offers FREE ACCESS to a collection of over 40 mental health and counselling articles".  Again this appeals to and resonates with my overly analytic approach.  I do tend to over analyse and to intellectualise these issues - perhaps the cause of a tg brain and identity is captive to the paradigm of the day so it may be better for folk like me to just accept that I am tg, that I just am, own this, live this and express this and get out of my brain and into my heart.... just saying!!!

Safe travels

Aisla

[ThatGirl]

A professor at Stanford University explaining trans brains.

[Christinetobe]

i'd be interested in seeing it, as i don't understand how could something biological define things that we like or identify as that are considered male or female things by society, at least that's my take on it

The simplest example that is NOT scientific I can give is a picture that my parents had of me when I was about two.  Christmas Day my brother playing with a new toy train by himself and me with my sisters using one of their new tea party sets.  I was way to young to understand gender roles at that time so I did what came naturally.  I am sure most of us have a similar experience but to me that screams biology

[Jason C]

I don't believe it's 100% biological for everyone, simply because everyone has different stories. If your brain is male but you're biologically female, you're probably the kind of person who's known since they were a kid and who assumed they'd develop a male body. Not everyone has that story. If it was biological for all trans people, it'd be something we all knew since we were very young.

I think it can be biological and is in a lot of cases, but I also think it can be mental or brought on by other external factors. That's not to make it sound like it's a mental illness or that it's trivial, that's NOT what I'm saying. I'm just saying that I think there are lots of things in life, even tiny things, that influence us in life. And that's not to say that you subconsciously choose to be trans, it's just that your brain naturally develops in that way because of external factors for some people. I think that's why everyone has a different story and a different way of seeing things; because our development isn't always identical.

As I say, this is just my own, personal, theory, and I wouldn't put my theory onto anyone else, I'm just saying it because of the topic. I don't think the why matters. Sure, if it's proven one day why people are trans, it'll be great, a lot of people will shut up hating people for simply being who they are. But it doesn't change the fact that we are who we are.

[Kara Jayde]

I don't believe it's 100% biological for everyone, simply because everyone has different stories. If your brain is male but you're biologically female, you're probably the kind of person who's known since they were a kid and who assumed they'd develop a male body. Not everyone has that story. If it was biological for all trans people, it'd be something we all knew since we were very young.

I think it can be biological and is in a lot of cases, but I also think it can be mental or brought on by other external factors. That's not to make it sound like it's a mental illness or that it's trivial, that's NOT what I'm saying. I'm just saying that I think there are lots of things in life, even tiny things, that influence us in life. And that's not to say that you subconsciously choose to be trans, it's just that your brain naturally develops in that way because of external factors for some people. I think that's why everyone has a different story and a different way of seeing things; because our development isn't always identical.

As I say, this is just my own, personal, theory, and I wouldn't put my theory onto anyone else, I'm just saying it because of the topic. I don't think the why matters. Sure, if it's proven one day why people are trans, it'll be great, a lot of people will shut up hating people for simply being who they are. But it doesn't change the fact that we are who we are.

I honestly feel the same way about homosexuality. That although most are bio gay and born that way, there are a small minority that literally choose to be gay. In fact, I know two gay men who have admitted as much to me, but whether you'd want to say they were simply in denial before hand, that's up to you.

I'm a little offended by the suggestion that because I didn't know from young that I had the "wrong body", that I'm the type that chooses it as you imply. Almost as if those who have direct gender dysphoria are more legitimate than those who have indirect gender dysphoria. You don't say this is the case exclusively of course, but I'd like to express that even though I only came out to myself fairly recently, it's pretty obvious in retrospect that it has been a lifelong issue, behind the scenes. It was always there, it didn't arrive due to trauma or tragic circumstances, I just refused to see it. Indirect gender dysphoria is just as 'real'.

I'm sure there are transwomen and transmen that somehow decided that, for some reason, they'd like to live life on the 'wild side' and play with their gender, but for most of us, living as the wrong gender is torture, and has been throughout our nurture phase. To me, that rings nature, but I'm not opposed to the suggestion it's a little of both. For me, I know it was more nature than anything, but each to their own. I think more studies need to be made personally.

A professor at Stanford University explaining trans brains.

Thanks for posting that, I think it's very interesting. I'm going to look into the topic from an academic pov and see what else I can find

fine then, though i would appreciate if you could explain where and why i'm wrong since me and my therapist usually talk about this subject, and i'll be able to have a better talk with her next time i go there

I don't have time to cover your question in as much detail as I'd like, but I think the problem here is you equate gender 'roles' (which are socially constructed) with gender behaviour in general (which people are predisposed to). A lot of behaviour is pre-programmed genetically (more than a lot of us would like to admit) in the same way that cats are - programmed - to scratch the often non-existent dirt after doing their business, or the way that beavers will literally build invisible dams, out of invisible logs, whilst in captivity, simply because they are programmed to do so.

I'm not suggesting that wearing dresses and playing with barbies in itself is genetic (although the barbie doll connection to femininity has actually been somewhat proved genetically by a small number of studies, not my point though) what I am suggesting, is that a predisposition to integration into the female behaviour roles of our species IS genetic, which means that certain things which are culturally connected to femininity, regardless of the era, will be adopted by a person who identifies with that specific gender, almost automatically (programmed behaviour) as a survival mechanism.

Now, the fact that transpeople identify and derive a feeling of normalcy from things which they are NOT supposed to be predisposed to, suggests a biological problem in the wiring at some point during development, which is what the studies are, and will most likely, continue to illustrate. This of course paints a very binary picture, but that's just for simplicity. The truth may be that, depending on the genetic milkshake that you begin as, and the development cycle, you align more with either one or the other gender, until one becomes dominant. Everybody would sit somewhere on the scale. Some women act more manly, some men more feminine. For those of us that are way off the scale in extremes (a male who is extremely feminine and identifies as a woman, for example) I'd suggest something problematic happened at some point during development. Although I understand that there are those who would be outright OFFENDED by the idea that they are some genetic anomaly, it may be the reality. It doesn't mean, however, that we should be considered freaks or ill, just that we didn't develop in an entirely normal way (which judging from our experience growing up, I think we can mostly agree on).

This doesn't mean, however, that I'm suggesting that women are predisposed to ironing and washing dishes, I'm not talking about culturally assigned gender roles of the current or previous era, but preprogrammed gender behaviour (the way we women speak, the mannerisms, the way we socialize, the desires, how we react to other women, or men, et cetera, et cetera...) which probably originate from hundreds of thousands of years ago, in the very least (evolutionary adaptation takes... a longgg... time... )

I'm not sure if that's clear, but again, I'd recommend reading the book I mentioned earlier.

[Asche]

For my part, I'm always skeptical of the biological explanations.  The problem is that there is an enormous cultural bias for seeing behaviors as inborn, and over and over again, we see very scientific studies which supposedly "prove" some biological basis for something which later turn out to have serious and fundamental flaws.  In most cases it isn't deliberate, but rather that people see what they expect to see, and frame what they see in terms of how they think things are.  Differences that agree with people's expectations get noticed and reported, things that don't agree get explained away, ignored, or just not seen at all.

BTW, by "skeptical", I don't mean I'm convinced they're wrong, I just mean I'm not prepared to believe the supposed evidence for them.

Brain functioning: it makes no sense to talk about "women's brains" vs. "men's brains,"  because women's brains aren't all alike and neither are men's brains.  For almost any measurement X you take of men and women, you'll find a large number of women who are more "male" than the male average and a lot of men who are more "female" than the female average.  I suspect that if you looked at brain scans of 1000 men and 1000 women and tried to figure out the sex just from the scans, you'd get a _lot_ of them wrong.  Popular reports (and books) usually just report the averages, not the distributions -- or they just say "they're different."  Next, how does one relate a difference in brain scans to actual behavior?  Nobody has any idea, and you could just as well relate a difference in hair length to behavior.  Finally, it's known that environment shapes brain development.  So even if there's a significant difference in brain functioning between men and women and that difference causes men to act more male, etc., that difference could be due to early influences.

We know that people's social environment affects how they behave and how they see themselves, and that it starts at birth (if not before.)  The gender policing starts even before birth, with people insisting on knowing unborn children's sex, with color-coding infants, with how even newborns are described and treated in a gender-dependent fashion.  Most children have a pretty good idea of "what boys are" and "what girls are" by the time they can talk.

On the other hand, "affects" doesn't mean "determines."  Different children will react differently to the same influences.  For instance, if you are told "you are a boy" and "boys like trucks", but you don't like trucks, you can either try to convince yourself you really like trucks, or you can decide you aren't really a boy because you really don't like trucks.  (Yes, this is very, very, very oversimplified.)  This mostly happens at a very early age, before (almost) any memories that are retained into adulthood.  (Although: I can remember at an early age -- before 6, at least -- consciously deciding to like trains because my father did.  And now, over a half-century later, I'm still fascinated by them.)

But in the end, what does it matter?  It's like asking whether Homer really wrote the Illiad and the Odyssy or some other ancient Greek bard did it.  (Answer: it was really a guy named George, but his buddies saw an episode of The Simpsons and decided to call him "Homer."  But I digress....)

Whether it's your genes, or the chemicals while you were in the womb, or early influences, or that comet you saw when you were twelve (or that spinning wheel you pricked yourself on ), you're still the way you are, and that's what you have to deal with -- and what should determine how people should treat you -- not any of the putative causes.

It reminds me of the arguments about whether gays/lesbians were "born that way" or not.  Basic decency and respect should tell us that gays/lesbians/etc. should not get fired, beaten up, thrown out of their homes, arrested, or killed for being gay/lesbian, regardless of why they're gay/lesbian.  Basic decency and respect should tell us that they should be allowed to form the same social commitments (marriage) as straights, regardless of why they're gay/lesbian.

In the same way, figuring out what anatomical and social gender is right for you doesn't really depend on why you are the way you are, and whether society should respect your conclusions and decisions on that score doesn't depend on why, either.

[Kara Jayde]

For my part, I'm always skeptical of the biological explanations.  The problem is that there is an enormous cultural bias for seeing behaviors as inborn, and over and over again, we see very scientific studies which supposedly "prove" some biological basis for something which later turn out to have serious and fundamental flaws.  In most cases it isn't deliberate, but rather that people see what they expect to see, and frame what they see in terms of how they think things are.  Differences that agree with people's expectations get noticed and reported, things that don't agree get explained away, ignored, or just not seen at all.

BTW, by "skeptical", I don't mean I'm convinced they're wrong, I just mean I'm not prepared to believe the supposed evidence for them.

Brain functioning: it makes no sense to talk about "women's brains" vs. "men's brains,"  because women's brains aren't all alike and neither are men's brains.  For almost any measurement X you take of men and women, you'll find a large number of women who are more "male" than the male average and a lot of men who are more "female" than the female average.  I suspect that if you looked at brain scans of 1000 men and 1000 women and tried to figure out the sex just from the scans, you'd get a _lot_ of them wrong.  Popular reports (and books) usually just report the averages, not the distributions -- or they just say "they're different."  Next, how does one relate a difference in brain scans to actual behavior?  Nobody has any idea, and you could just as well relate a difference in hair length to behavior.  Finally, it's known that environment shapes brain development.  So even if there's a significant difference in brain functioning between men and women and that difference causes men to act more male, etc., that difference could be due to early influences.

We know that people's social environment affects how they behave and how they see themselves, and that it starts at birth (if not before.)  The gender policing starts even before birth, with people insisting on knowing unborn children's sex, with color-coding infants, with how even newborns are described and treated in a gender-dependent fashion.  Most children have a pretty good idea of "what boys are" and "what girls are" by the time they can talk.

On the other hand, "affects" doesn't mean "determines."  Different children will react differently to the same influences.  For instance, if you are told "you are a boy" and "boys like trucks", but you don't like trucks, you can either try to convince yourself you really like trucks, or you can decide you aren't really a boy because you really don't like trucks.  (Yes, this is very, very, very oversimplified.)  This mostly happens at a very early age, before (almost) any memories that are retained into adulthood.  (Although: I can remember at an early age -- before 6, at least -- consciously deciding to like trains because my father did.  And now, over a half-century later, I'm still fascinated by them.)

I think you're committing the problem of separating humans from the rest of the animal kingdom in your analysis of the issue. Yes, humans have more advanced cognitive abilities, but they stem from the same primitive processes as our evolutionary ancestors. By focusing on humans exclusively, the trap of getting caught in the complexity of cognition is too easy to make (aka gender roles, sociology, psychology, cultural pressures) whereas you can get very clear ideas on the links between genetic make up and behaviour by simply studying animal behaviour. There are very clear differences in behaviour among animals, very often marked along the gender line. Now, the differences don't always fall in the same way (the female isn't always the care-giver, the male not always the dominant protector, etc) but regardless, the differences in gender and the differences in behaviour due to that gender divide is very, very clear. All I'm suggesting is, extrapolate that data and add the complexity of human abstract thought to the mix, and suddenly you have something that resembles our culture, along with gender roles. My initial point (in my initial post) was that gender roles are themselves a reflection of the gender defined behaviours that our species probably adapted during early evolution.  I do understand what you're saying, and I'm not saying I disagree that the social element isn't huge, but I think that it does all stem back down to biology. Just my 2 cents, obviously this is a debate that will not get solved in some little corner of the internet, but will require a LOT of research in these fields.

But in the end, what does it matter?  It's like asking whether Homer really wrote the Illiad and the Odyssy or some other ancient Greek bard did it.  (Answer: it was really a guy named George, but his buddies saw an episode of The Simpsons and decided to call him "Homer."  But I digress....)

Whether it's your genes, or the chemicals while you were in the womb, or early influences, or that comet you saw when you were twelve (or that spinning wheel you pricked yourself on ), you're still the way you are, and that's what you have to deal with -- and what should determine how people should treat you -- not any of the putative causes.

It reminds me of the arguments about whether gays/lesbians were "born that way" or not.  Basic decency and respect should tell us that gays/lesbians/etc. should not get fired, beaten up, thrown out of their homes, arrested, or killed for being gay/lesbian, regardless of why they're gay/lesbian.  Basic decency and respect should tell us that they should be allowed to form the same social commitments (marriage) as straights, regardless of why they're gay/lesbian.

In the same way, figuring out what anatomical and social gender is right for you doesn't really depend on why you are the way you are, and whether society should respect your conclusions and decisions on that score doesn't depend on why, either.

And this I wholeheartedly agree with. I don't really think it matters at all, you are what you are and that's that. For me personally though, I'm not 'making a choice'. I didn't wake up one day wanting to be something I'm not. I'm 'fixing' a problem that I've had my entire life, a problem that was not my fault, and that I've suffered with, for all that time. I'm wanting to be something I always was, and that's fundamentally a different thing. Maybe to you it sounds like the same difference, but to me it isn't.

[Edge]

Can we stop conflating gender with gender roles?
Gender is a real, biological thing which has been backed up by scientific studies and will most likely be confirmed by more.
Gender roles have no biological basis (that has been found and is unlikely to) and are something completely different. Women can be "masculine" without turning into guys. Men can be "feminine" without turning into women.

[Jason C]

I honestly feel the same way about homosexuality. That although most are bio gay and born that way, there are a small minority that literally choose to be gay. In fact, I know two gay men who have admitted as much to me, but whether you'd want to say they were simply in denial before hand, that's up to you.

I'm a little offended by the suggestion that because I didn't know from young that I had the "wrong body", that I'm the type that chooses it as you imply. Almost as if those who have direct gender dysphoria are more legitimate than those who have indirect gender dysphoria. You don't say this is the case exclusively of course, but I'd like to express that even though I only came out to myself fairly recently, it's pretty obvious in retrospect that it has been a lifelong issue, behind the scenes. It was always there, it didn't arrive due to trauma or tragic circumstances, I just refused to see it. Indirect gender dysphoria is just as 'real'.

I'm sure there are transwomen and transmen that somehow decided that, for some reason, they'd like to live life on the 'wild side' and play with their gender, but for most of us, living as the wrong gender is torture, and has been throughout our nurture phase. To me, that rings nature, but I'm not opposed to the suggestion it's a little of both. For me, I know it was more nature than anything, but each to their own. I think more studies need to be made personally.

If you read that sentence again, I said that's NOT to say that people subconsciously choose to be trans. I don't believe anyone chooses it, whether consciously or subconsciously. I said that it isn't something that anyone chooses, but for people, like myself, who didn't always know it from a very young age, it might possibly be the way their mind has naturally developed through external factors.

[Kara Jayde]

If you read that sentence again, I said that's NOT to say that people subconsciously choose to be trans. I don't believe anyone chooses it, whether consciously or subconsciously. I said that it isn't something that anyone chooses, but for people, like myself, who didn't always know it from a very young age, it might possibly be the way their mind has naturally developed through external factors.

Whoops, sorry Jason! ^^ Likewise, I didn't know from a young age, but still, I'd find it hard to believe it was events that somehow made me this way. I know many people that went through events much like what I did in school and their home lives and don't seem to exhibit any gender identity confusion, but we are each so varied in how we respond to stimuli, so who knows.

[Nero]

If you read that sentence again, I said that's NOT to say that people subconsciously choose to be trans. I don't believe anyone chooses it, whether consciously or subconsciously. I said that it isn't something that anyone chooses, but for people, like myself, who didn't always know it from a very young age, it might possibly be the way their mind has naturally developed through external factors.

Whoops, sorry Jason! ^^ Likewise, I didn't know from a young age, but still, I'd find it hard to believe it was events that somehow made me this way. I know many people that went through events much like what I did in school and their home lives and don't seem to exhibit any gender identity confusion, but we are each so varied in how we respond to stimuli, so who knows.

Interesting convo. I sometimes wonder if there are different causes. Or maybe there could be a variety of causes with it still happening in the womb that manifest differently. There are people for whom this is such a very clear thing early on and others it's not. Maybe there are people for whom it was a more complete masculinization or feminization of the brain. And these might be those who are very stereotypically their target gender. Extremely feminine, straight trans girls. Or extremely masculine, straight trans boys.

I think sexual orientation also plays some part in all this for a trans person. For how this all plays out. I know gender and sexual orientation are important distinctions. But generally, people hoping to attract males are going to engage in certain behaviors less common for people into females. And vice versa. I know it's a generalization and not true for everybody.
But I think this could help explain the vast differences in the lives of straight and lesbian trans women. The latter are just more likely to have adopted a more stereotypically male role. (Not everybody, of course)

Because they were into women, they felt more pressure to live up to male expectations than those who grew up liking men. Basically, males and females are attracted to different things in a partner. So young lesbian trans girls were more likely to develop a more masculine persona than the straight girls. That's my theory, anyway. And I know it doesn't always hold out - some lesbian trans girls didn't do this.

And orientation - maybe whatever 'sexual attraction' part in the brain was left untouched in the hormonal baths of gay and lesbian trans men and women. Again, just an idea.

[Edge]

I think denial can also be stronger than people give it credit.
Personally, I know I picked up effeminate mannerisms to try to pretend to be normal and especially after I was raped because of how badly that affected my mind. Currently, those mannerisms make me very uncomfortable though.

[Eva Marie]

This is a very interesting conversation. I am transitioning later in life and I never knew a thing until it walloped me in my 40s. Now, looking back with the knowledge of who I really am I can clearly see the clues, behaviors, feelings, and the facade I carefully constructed to protect my real self. It wasn't denial; it was more ignorance and all of the expectations put on me as an apparent bio-male. I didn't know any different.

I have all of the classic symptoms of exposure to DES but my mother says she didn't take it during her pregnancy. Who knows what happened back then, but something clearly did.

I was under no pressure socially or in any other way to transition - that pressure came from inside me. That's why the biological in utero theory resonates strongly with me.

Hopefully some day soon definitive proof will be found and all of the grief we have to endure that comes from people thinking this is a lifestyle choice will end.

[Colleen♡Callie]

i'd be interested in seeing it, as i don't understand how could something biological define things that we like or identify as that are considered male or female things by society, at least that's my take on it

Autism.  Hinders sociality, sets us with obsessive interests, specific preferences on sensory stimuli, certain noises and sensations are horrible while others are great, all to a degree well beyond normal, and is something we have little to no control over.

Autism is caused by our brains being wired very differently than the normal.  This biological change to our neurobiology results in autism.  Mri scans have shown the different sections of the brain used for tasks and how entirely different sections of the brain are used depending on whether it is an autistic brain or not.

We aren't that little voice in our head.  We are our brains.  The whole of it.  The frontal lobe is our consciousness.  It is our awareness and the thoughts we hear.  But the sections that control our ability to form and understand speech exist in left parietal lobe.  Without these you wouldn't have that voice that we so often define ourselves as, because it couldn't produce the words, or understand them.  Our emotions and feelings and preferences and likes and dislikes all stem from other regions of our brain.

Damaging any section of the brain can vastly change a person's personality, interests and likes.  This is why electroshock therapy was ever a thing.  It worked.  Damage the regions of the brain to severely alter a person's behavior.  It was effective, and so people overlooked the barbarism of it for a long time.

We aren't that little voice.  We are our brain, its wiring and its structure.  That's biological.



The fact that gender identity issues are horrible and agonizing and we fight them until we just don't have the strength to anymore and resign ourselves to the harsh realities, realities we don't want, of being openly trans in the world, I don't see how it can simply be optional based on preference.  I can prefer things and not indulge.  I can live without.  Preference are choices.  I wish I had the option and choice to be normal, to not be trans.  Life would be better, and I wouldn't be scared that death is the only way I'll truly find peace.  But it's not a choice, and I am stuck with this bitter reality and 30 years of agony because of it.  I prefer to be normal.   I am not.  I am trans.

[Colleen♡Callie]

Social gender constructs do, however, exist.  Back in shakespearean times tights were masculine.  Today, feminine.  Pink was a masculine color, blue feminine.  Pink was warm, warm colors were for men, cool colors like blue were for women.

Dress, colors, social gender roles, all of these are society based and change from time to time and culture to culture.  This however doesn't mean there aren't biological differences and roles.  There are.  These are found everywhere in nature.  Difference being?  Rarely is the much of an inequality in nature between the genders.

But we aren't trans because we want to wear clothes society deems feminine or masculine.  I mean, we can be.  Crossdressers and ->-bleeped-<-s fall under the transgender label.  However they still tend to identify with their birth sex, but have a preference for the clothes and things society deems belongs to the opposite gender.

That fits SilverGirl's idea of transgender being a preference over biological.  But it only works for crossdressers and ->-bleeped-<-s.

For the rest of us, who identify as the opposite gender, or neither, or inbetween, it doesn't.  My identity isn't female because I want to wear dresses and makeup.  Remove societal gender constructs and I will still be dysphoric.  Gender expression and society do go together however.  I grew up in the same society and culture as the girls around me.  Getting the same messages as them about what is for boys and what is for girls.  And being a girl, I wanted to join in with the girl stuff.  But that was barred because the rest of the world saw me as a boy.  Yes society does aggrevate our dysphoria something fierce by separating things into "for boys" and "for girls", but it doesn't create the dysphoria.  It was already there, these things just made it worse.

Trans* people get the same societal messages as cispeople do, and are taught the same things and then banned from expressing our gender.  There is no biological cause to want to wear a dress.  There is a biological cause giving me a female identity though.  And I was raised and shaped by the same society and it's socially constructed gender norms as cisgendered people around me were.  I got the same messages they did.  I am female, these are female things.  Then I was locked up on the with the boys and the boy things. 

Biologically there is a reason for my female identity.  I was then influenced the same as everyone else by the society I was raised in.  I would still be dysphoric without society.

[Kara Jayde]

Interesting convo. I sometimes wonder if there are different causes. Or maybe there could be a variety of causes with it still happening in the womb that manifest differently. There are people for whom this is such a very clear thing early on and others it's not. Maybe there are people for whom it was a more complete masculinization or feminization of the brain. And these might be those who are very stereotypically their target gender. Extremely feminine, straight trans girls. Or extremely masculine, straight trans boys.

There may very well be a great deal of things that could happen in the womb that would cause it, I'd think. We know that outside influences do affect development, as well as internal situations (stress versus serenity for the mother). When I came out to my mother, one of the first things she said was 'Is it because you were prem?'. I laughed, if that were the case every prem. baby would be dysphoric, but maybe the same things that led to be being dysphoric led to me being premature? Who knows?

I think sexual orientation also plays some part in all this for a trans person. For how this all plays out. I know gender and sexual orientation are important distinctions. But generally, people hoping to attract males are going to engage in certain behaviors less common for people into females. And vice versa. I know it's a generalization and not true for everybody.
But I think this could help explain the vast differences in the lives of straight and lesbian trans women. The latter are just more likely to have adopted a more stereotypically male role. (Not everybody, of course)

Because they were into women, they felt more pressure to live up to male expectations than those who grew up liking men. Basically, males and females are attracted to different things in a partner. So young lesbian trans girls were more likely to develop a more masculine persona than the straight girls. That's my theory, anyway. And I know it doesn't always hold out - some lesbian trans girls didn't do this.

And orientation - maybe whatever 'sexual attraction' part in the brain was left untouched in the hormonal baths of gay and lesbian trans men and women. Again, just an idea.

Sexual Orientation certainly played a part in my denial or understanding (or lack thereof) of my dysphoria. The reason why I didn't click, is because I have always been attracted to women, and still am. In my head, I assumed that I couldn't be a woman if I was interested in women, so I ignored the deep feelings inside that told me otherwise. That being said, I've been attracted to women since around the age of five (maybe when I first realized I 'wasn't' one) which, compared to most males, is VERY early, so it's possible my attraction to women is a projection or manifestation of my desire to truly be a woman? Or maybe, like many women do, I just developed a sexual interest very early (most girls I know said their first crush came at about 5 - 6). 

If I am a natural lesbian (just born in the wrong gender, so to say) it might explain why I was less dysphoric about dressing in a masculine way and pretending to be masculine - and I was able to suppress it for so long (26 years)?  This may not be the case at all but I think it's an interesting angle.  I certainly think there's something to the sliding scale of femininity/masculinity during development that goes toward how you will integrate into society (and as which behavioural role).

The fact that gender identity issues are horrible and agonizing and we fight them until we just don't have the strength to anymore and resign ourselves to the harsh realities, realities we don't want, of being openly trans in the world, I don't see how it can simply be optional based on preference.  I can prefer things and not indulge.  I can live without.  Preference are choices.  I wish I had the option and choice to be normal, to not be trans.  Life would be better, and I wouldn't be scared that death is the only way I'll truly find peace.  But it's not a choice, and I am stuck with this bitter reality and 30 years of agony because of it.  I prefer to be normal.   I am not.  I am trans.

Exactly how I feel, thank you. This is why I find the choice aspect hard to swallow, but I also understand my experience (or yours) may not ring true for every transperson.

Dress, colors, social gender roles, all of these are society based and change from time to time and culture to culture.  This however doesn't mean there aren't biological differences and roles.  There are.  These are found everywhere in nature.  Difference being?  Rarely is the much of an inequality in nature between the genders.

That's really subjective, define inequality for an animal without abstract thought. I'd say the difference is that they behave the way they behave, and there's little flux. Depending on the level of dimorphism in the species, the females and males may behave completely differently, and how you'd define equality depends on what aspect you're defining. Child rearing? Food supply? Protection from predators? Mate selection? Which elements are equal, because in most cases these are far from equal between the genders of dimorphic species, depending on how you view it. I'm not attributing a positive or negative connotation to my use of the word equal by the way.

But we aren't trans because we want to wear clothes society deems feminine or masculine.  I mean, we can be.  Crossdressers and ->-bleeped-<-s fall under the transgender label.  However they still tend to identify with their birth sex, but have a preference for the clothes and things society deems belongs to the opposite gender.

That fits SilverGirl's idea of transgender being a preference over biological.  But it only works for crossdressers and ->-bleeped-<-s.

For the rest of us, who identify as the opposite gender, or neither, or inbetween, it doesn't.  My identity isn't female because I want to wear dresses and makeup.  Remove societal gender constructs and I will still be dysphoric.  Gender expression and society do go together however. I grew up in the same society and culture as the girls around me.  Getting the same messages as them about what is for boys and what is for girls.  And being a girl, I wanted to join in with the girl stuff.  But that was barred because the rest of the world saw me as a boy. Yes society does aggrevate our dysphoria something fierce by separating things into "for boys" and "for girls", but it doesn't create the dysphoria.  It was already there, these things just made it worse.

Trans* people get the same societal messages as cispeople do, and are taught the same things and then banned from expressing our gender.  There is no biological cause to want to wear a dress.  There is a biological cause giving me a female identity though.  And I was raised and shaped by the same society and it's socially constructed gender norms as cisgendered people around me were.  I got the same messages they did.  I am female, these are female things.  Then I was locked up on the with the boys and the boy things. 

Biologically there is a reason for my female identity.  I was then influenced the same as everyone else by the society I was raised in.  I would still be dysphoric without society.

Beautifully explained! This is exactly what I was trying to get at, but you've expressed it so eloquently. Thank you! I think that really is the best way to explain it. There is no biological basis behind culturally defined abstract femininity, but in the desire to integrate into the feminine itself.

When I first put on female clothes, for example, I felt euphoric, after spending a lifetime crossdressing in male clothes. It felt so good that I could have easily attributed the feeling to a predisposition to wearing female clothes, as odd as that would be, but the more likely is, my desire to integrate into society as a woman, and be seen as a women, projects onto those things which hold 'femininity' in society. A bra, which is never worn by a man, instantly eases dysphoria, because it makes you suddenly feel closer to what your biological drive has been pushing for, integration into the correct gender role (regardless of the culture built up around it).

[nicki]

I have recently found out that my mother was producing far too much oestrogen while she was pregnant with me. She had all manor of tests done and the doctor's were very worried that I wouldn't stay in there. They never discovered why her levels were so high, she was not taking DES or similar .

I am now convinced that I was essentially undergoing HRT whilst in the womb and my body and brain were becoming female. Once I was born, testosterone took over and gradually made my body revert to type (yuk!) but not my brain.

I am hoping to start HRT in a month or two, which in my opinion, will finish the process begun all those years ago.

I had come to terms with my dysphoria before I found out about this and was already on the path to transition but this revelation was the final piece of the puzzle. Everything just clicked into place. Having a plausible explanation has really helped me and is going to make my job coming out to my remaining family and friends a little easier !

I can't say whether there is always a biological or genetic cause for GID but for my personal situation the evidence would suggest a resounding yes to that.

Nicki

[suzifrommd]

Late to the party (as usual), but I'll put in my two cents.

I experienced being transgender as something that was wired into my brain. I've been able to change habits. I've been able to reevaluate biases. I've been able to change patterns of my own thinking that were entrenched for decades. My likes and dislikes can turn on a dime.

But the part of my brain that is telling me how wonderful it is to be a woman will not budge. It cannot be bought, bargained with, or tempted. It doesn't balance costs and benefits, risks and probabilities. It is not open to logic or emotional appeal, or even fear. It does not present evidence or even appear to have any rational origin. It just insists that I need to be female.

No other process within my brain works that way. In most cases, if I'm presented with a compelling case one way or the other, I'll reevaluate. Otherwise the decision is up to me.

But as far as my gender, the decision is made. Nothing I could do could change it, and that part of my brain was going to MAKE SURE that I KEPT THINKING ABOUT IT until I AGREED 100% to transition.

If I hadn't already heard a lot about transgender when this was going on, I would literally have thought I was gripped by some delusional mania, because here I was, a logical, competent person, capable of managing every aspect of my life, now willing to throw away marriage, possibly a career it took a dozen years to build, possibly even the kids who mean more to me than anything else in the world, just to become a woman.

Folks, this is wired into our brains. There is no way this is an idea I had along the way.