Important Question, please help!

[fleur_de_lis]

Can anyone tell me what the estimated ratio of trans-females to trans-males within the trans-community is?
I've spent ages on Google but there aren't any decent statistics. I'm pretty sure there are more trans-females but I'd like a source to cite.

Thanks in advance!

[Nero]

I think the only statistics out there are something like 1 in 30,000 mtfs and 1 in 100,000 ftms. But there are doubts as to it's accuracy because the number usually is the number of those having SRS, and at least half of all transguys never have actual 'sex change surgery' aka genital surgery, just top surgery.

Some think the number of mtf and ftm births is roughly equal.

Posted on: December 18, 2007, 02:08:22 PManother thought is perhaps there ARE more mtfs because of that drug that was used by mothers caused many mtf births.
ladies, help me out here. i know several of you for whom this was the case. what was the drug again?

[fleur_de_lis]

yeah I found a site where it said "1:34,000 for M2F and 1:108,000 for F2M" but that was from 1974 so it must be way more now......

I just need a recent estimation.

[Dennis]

I think the number of FTM's is grossly underestimated for exactly the reason Nero said: most of us don't have bottom surgery because the options are less than satisfactory and astoundlingly expensive. In this phallocentric society, that says that we haven't completed transition. So we don't count in official stats. And, many of us have lived as gender-variant women before becoming male, so we don't have a lot of resources. Even if we wanted bottom surgery, many can't get it.

Also, FTM's, for the most part, blend and pass after a year or two on T. And guys suck at social networking, so we don't tend to spend a lot of time making ourselves visible. I know I don't do any trans stuff other than this board. Some know in my community, but many don't even think about it really.

But the DES thing might mean there are more MTF than FTM, but I doubt that the proportion is as high as the stats indicate.

Dennis

[Seshatneferw]

There are also some hints that the MTF and FTM cases may not be completely symmetrical: a few years ago there was a study (M. Gahr, 'Male Japanese quails with female brains do not show male sexual behaviors', PNAS 100:13 (2003), p. 7959--7964) where parts of the brain were transplanted from one bird embryo to another. In that study the 'FtM' birds behaved as females but the 'MtF' ones did not behave as males.

This is still very preliminary, though, and it's not at all obvious that the same applies to humans -- especially since the old statistics can be explained rather well by cultural differences and the very different surgical options. Also, the numbers are pretty low, and this too is likely to be because the cultural climate and medical options have changed in the past couple of decades.

As for the prevalence of transsexuality, Olyslager and Conway ('On the Calculation of the Prevalence of Transsexualism',  WPATH 20th International Symposium, 2007) suggest something like 1:2000--1:4500 for MtF and 1:5500--1:8000 for FtM -- and this for transsexuality that has resulted in surgery, with estimates as low as 1:100 or more for the various transgendered conditions put together. The Wikipedia entry for 'transsexualism' has some pointers.

So, anyway, it's something between 1:100,000 and 1:100 for FtM, and between 1:35,000 and 1:100 for MtF. Helpful, eh? 

  Nfr

[Nero]

There are also some hints that the MTF and FTM cases may not be completely symmetrical: a few years ago there was a study (M. Gahr, 'Male Japanese quails with female brains do not show male sexual behaviors', PNAS 100:13 (2003), p. 7959--7964) where parts of the brain were transplanted from one bird embryo to another. In that study the 'FtM' birds behaved as females but the 'MtF' ones did not behave as males.

Sexual behaviours aren't a very good indication, though. A testosterone deprived (or whatever hormones birds have) male would not likely behave as a normal male. A strong desire to procreate accompanies estrogen, also.

[tekla]

Biologically, unless its tied to specific set of chromosomes, the number should be roughly fifty-fifty, but since nothing is ever perfect the real number would be something more like 51-49 because that's the way nature tends to work out in real life. 

I think that for a number of reasons biology, culture, society its easier for a FtM to be less visible.  And there are a number of famous passing of women as men, far more than the other way.

That being said, there are way too many variables at work in the question.  Just who exactly does (and who exactly doesn't) count in the final amount.  What is the absolute factor (just for the purpose of your study) that makes someone TS or NOT TS?  A number that would require surgery vs. a number that took self-diagnoses would be much, much lower.  Anyway, no real survey with any predictive ability has ever been done on any facet of our community, other than the numbers of operations, and even that number is suspect, so the numbers are about as vague as you can get - or want. 

[Seshatneferw]

Sexual behaviours aren't a very good indication, though.

True -- and as I said, the difference between apparent MtF and FtM numbers can be explained quite adequately by other reasons besides biology.

tink posted an interesting study that basically said (edited for use in my paper)

Recent autopsies of male-to-female transsexuals indicate a significant differentiation in the area of the hypothalamus that manage sexual behavior.

There's also a more recent study or two (Hulshoff et al., 'Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure', European Journal of Endocrinology 155 (2006) SS107­S114) that suggests these differences may be a result of HRT. The jury is still out.

For what it's worth, looking at it from the inside I'm convinced that GID is some sort of a congenital mismatch between the brain and the rest of the body. However, even that is more than we know for sure, and the details are very much in the dark.

  Nfr