Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Transgender people are born that way a new study has found

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/03/15/transgender-people-are-born-that-way-a-new-study-has-found/

Pink News/by Josh Jackman    03/15/2018

Hello,

I was born with a female nature, but do not feel I am a woman trapped in a man's body. I do not believe transitioning has to do with abuse, bullying, or being bullied. I do not believe it is an identity we form by getting drunk or stoned. Being Transgender M to F or M and F. in my case when first discovered had a great deal to do with personality traits, being linguistic, artistic, athletic, and interactive. I know men who go through their lives trying to be hunks, and get nowhere. My having these characteristics, and being liberated may have helped me develop my libido. Sensitive towards gay men, attracted to dominant women. Normally I point out my stronger sister, and I were born twins, we literally came out together. Being gay is ancient. Being transgender merely how many gay people choose to identify. That was the case with me after accepting that I had homosexual tendencies. I accepted my being feminine, not as a result of my being submissive, but having more to do with being born pretty, and having some recognition of my partners fantasies. I feel a whole article can be written about gay men and transgender women who have experienced sodomy. When a body is penetrated we tend to feminize our construction, and reconstruction of fantasy. I can remember countless peers who were male who I have kissed at least innocently. Is it scary, yes, to some it excuses crime against gays and transgenders. I believe we can be born Transgender, that a transgender is someone who will  evolve through their own stages of the life cycle, feeling more, and more they identify themselves at least in the role of the opposite sex.

Quote from: stephaniec on March 15, 2018, 11:26:45 AM
Transgender people are born that way a new study has found

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/03/15/transgender-people-are-born-that-way-a-new-study-has-found/

Pink News/by Josh Jackman    03/15/2018

Oh yes we are!!!

Quote from: Wendyway2 on March 16, 2018, 04:06:18 AM
Hello,

I was born with a female nature, but do not feel I am a woman trapped in a man's body.

You are a spirit inside a body, a woman in a body implies a body inside another body.

QuoteI do not believe it is an identity we form by getting drunk or stoned.

I disagree. Being stoned is one of the few times in life I am free of stress and feel free and happy. And coincidentally during these times I often feel intensely female (with some periods of genderlessness as well).
However I am not a big fan of booze and quite often it does nothing for me or even impair me cognitively.

QuoteBeing Transgender M to F or M and F. in my case when first discovered had a great deal to do with personality traits, being linguistic, artistic, athletic, and interactive.

Those are androgynous and vague traits so I am not sure I know what you mean. What exactly does "interactive" mean in this context?

QuoteI know men who go through their lives trying to be hunks, and get nowhere.

That would be me. Tried doing what it says in those books to be a confident alpha male, yet haven't received a single drop of love.

QuoteMy having these characteristics, and being liberated may have helped me develop my libido.

Please refrain from using such vague words in the future. What characteristics do you refer to? And to what do you refer when you say "being liberated"?

QuoteSensitive towards gay men, attracted to dominant women.

What do you mean by "sensitive", in this context?

QuoteNormally I point out my stronger sister, and I were born twins, we literally came out together. Being gay is ancient. Being transgender merely how many gay people choose to identify. That was the case with me after accepting that I had homosexual tendencies. I accepted my being feminine, not as a result of my being submissive, but having more to do with being born pretty, and having some recognition of my partners fantasies.

This is your case but not my case. I feel I am feminine as the result of being submissive, and also prettier than males in some ways. But there are other reasons as well, in my younger years I had higher levels of compassion than most (no compassion anymore really, after all I have not received a single drop of love from society.)

QuoteI feel a whole article can be written about gay men and transgender women who have experienced sodomy. When a body is penetrated we tend to feminize our construction, and reconstruction of fantasy.

This is correct, yes. That is, if the mtf is comfortable and ready for penetration, and is not a full, hard, lesbian.
(Hard not referring to a penis erection but, a rather character of spirit equivalent to an untamed beast.)

Quote
I can remember countless peers who were male who I have kissed at least innocently. Is it scary, yes, to some it excuses crime against gays and transgenders. I believe we can be born Transgender, that a transgender is someone who will  evolve through their own stages of the life cycle, feeling more, and more they identify themselves at least in the role of the opposite sex.

I do not have anything to say on this segment, as it is beginning to put foot in with the nonsensical waters.

Hi,

I was going to respond to a post about a recent publication saying that we are born trans, but it was an old thread so I'm starting this.  It's going be from the perspective of M2F folk.   It applies to other trans folk as well.

I'm a neuroscientist, so a lot of this is from the medical literature.  In general, advanced scanning technology over the past 10 years or so has compared M2F brains to cis males and females.  Our brains in small but important regions are like cis females and totally unlike cis males.  This has been found pre HRT.  Two of those regions are the bed nucleus of the stria terminalus and the SDN.  SDN stands for sexual dimorphic nucleus.  There are other regions but those are two I call remember right now.

Apparently, these differences give us a sense of identity that we are female

So, M2F brains are like those of cis-women and NOT like cis-men.   We are born this way. 

BTW.  I don't like the expression "I identify as a woman".   It sounds kind of whimsical and doesn't reflect the depth this resides in our psyches.   I believe,as such, the expression gives our detractors something to use against us.   "Well, you identify as a woman today, I identify as a dog and will use the fire hydrant".  You know, mocking us.    That sort of thing.

WE know what we mean by the terminology we use.  Cis folk don't and we need to think about what we use when talking to them about us.  We don't want to give weapons to the bad apples.

Understand?   Comments?  Ideas?

Quote from: Russngrl on January 05, 2019, 04:39:13 PM
I'm a neuroscientist, so a lot of this is from the medical literature.  In general, advanced scanning technology over the past 10 years or so has compared M2F brains to cis males and females.  Our brains in small but important regions are like cis females and totally unlike cis males.  This has been found pre HRT.  Two of those regions are the bed nucleus of the stria terminalus and the SDN.  SDN stands for sexual dimorphic nucleus.  There are other regions but those are two I call remember right now.

Apparently, these differences give us a sense of identity that we are female

So, M2F brains are like those of cis-women and NOT like cis-men.   We are born this way. 

BTW.  I don't like the expression "I identify as a woman".   It sounds kind of whimsical and doesn't reflect the depth this resides in our psyches.   I believe,as such, the expression gives our detractors something to use against us.   "Well, you identify as a woman today, I identify as a dog and will use the fire hydrant".  You know, mocking us.    That sort of thing.

WE know what we mean by the terminology we use.  Cis folk don't and we need to think about what we use when talking to them about us.  We don't want to give weapons to the bad apples.

Can you give links to any of this scientific literature?

(https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/027/475/Screen_Shot_2018-10-25_at_11.02.15_AM.jpg)
*Pretends to be shocked*

Quote from: Russngrl on January 05, 2019, 04:39:13 PM
Hi,

I was going to respond to a post about a recent publication saying that we are born trans, but it was an old thread so I'm starting this.  It's going be from the perspective of M2F folk.   It applies to other trans folk as well.

I'm a neuroscientist, so a lot of this is from the medical literature.  In general, advanced scanning technology over the past 10 years or so has compared M2F brains to cis males and females.  Our brains in small but important regions are like cis females and totally unlike cis males.  This has been found pre HRT.  Two of those regions are the bed nucleus of the stria terminalus and the SDN.  SDN stands for sexual dimorphic nucleus.  There are other regions but those are two I call remember right now.

Apparently, these differences give us a sense of identity that we are female

So, M2F brains are like those of cis-women and NOT like cis-men.   We are born this way. 

I'm AFAB and agree, this is what I feel very strongly and when measuring my 2D:4D digit ratio it is typical of men and a strong indicator of having been exposed to male levels of T in the womb. Essentially, I have female chromosones but was "baked" as a man.

Quote from: Russngrl on January 05, 2019, 04:39:13 PM
BTW.  I don't like the expression "I identify as a woman".   It sounds kind of whimsical and doesn't reflect the depth this resides in our psyches.   I believe,as such, the expression gives our detractors something to use against us.   "Well, you identify as a woman today, I identify as a dog and will use the fire hydrant".  You know, mocking us.    That sort of thing.

WE know what we mean by the terminology we use.  Cis folk don't and we need to think about what we use when talking to them about us.  We don't want to give weapons to the bad apples.

Understand?   Comments?  Ideas?

Yes I find the same. I say that I am male and I am a man.

When meeting the gender Psychiatrist for the first time I wrote to him the following statement:

QuoteI understand that the diagnosis gender dysphoria is required to start treatment.

In my mind, I was born male, I did not choose it or prefer it over something else, I have had no option of any other gender. I did not acquire it in any manner possible. I do not care for the terms; chosen, acquired or preferred gender any more than those terms can be used to describe sexuality. 

I have unsuccessfully attempted to acquire the female gender but I'm unable to do so; even when delivering two children. For what its worth, a male delivering children is interesting.

This is exactly the same as my sexuality. I'm attracted to males, I'm gay, I did not choose that or acquire that, it is simply what is.

Quote from: GordonG on January 05, 2019, 09:22:04 PM
Can you give links to any of this scientific literature?

Yes please me too

It would take me some time to look it up.  I volunteer at a nonprofit as a receptionist, answering phones and sometimes not much else.   But I have access to the internet.  So, I spend my time researching all sorts of topics, this among others.

I will need to search for them again.  Try googling bed nucleus of stria terminalus or sexual dimorphic nucleus (or SDN) along with transgender.  You'll probably find some of it.  Then look up the referances of the articles you find.

Oh, any thoughts about my comments regarding some of the terminology we use giving ammunition to our detractors?

Quote from: Russngrl on January 06, 2019, 10:35:22 AM
Oh, any thoughts about my comments regarding some of the terminology we use giving ammunition to our detractors?

I guess you might say that I identify as female because I am female.  Someone saying they identify as a dog to mock is using semantics and either not really  understanding or is doing it to be an ass. The response would be are you a dog?. 

Yeah, sometimes its important to phrase things perfectly so that your words can't be twisted against you. 

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Quote from: Russngrl on January 06, 2019, 10:32:21 AM
It would take me some time to look it up.  I volunteer at a nonprofit as a receptionist, answering phones and sometimes not much else.   But I have access to the internet.  So, I spend my time researching all sorts of topics, this among others.

I will need to search for them again.  Try googling bed nucleus of stria terminalus or sexual dimorphic nucleus (or SDN) along with transgender.  You'll probably find some of it.  Then look up the referances of the articles you find.

Thank you for the search topics @Russngrl.  You may be aware that posting links before reaching "family" status (500 posts) is not allowed. But if you feel one may be necessary, please send it to me at jessica@susans.org and I'll review it and post for you if it is helpful on this thread.

Most of the literature I read are highly technical and would require a medical degree or background in neuroscience anyway.  People can do those searches if desired

Isn't it nice when the cis community finally "discovers" what we've known all along. It reminds me of Vespucci  "discovering" America while the natives scratched their heads  ::)

Quote from: luckygirl on January 06, 2019, 01:57:52 PM
Isn't it nice when the cis community finally "discovers" what we've known all along. It reminds me of Vespucci  "discovering" America while the natives scratched their heads  ::)

It's quite absurd but hey it's nice that the science is on our side anyway.  ::)

Quote from: luckygirl on January 06, 2019, 01:57:52 PM
Isn't it nice when the cis community finally "discovers" what we've known all along.

Agree! Why do people always need to have scientific proof of smth what they don't consider to be usual? Yes, it's nature and it was always like that.

Quote from: JessGK on February 22, 2019, 04:49:17 AM
Agree! Why do people always need to have scientific proof of smth what they don't consider to be usual? Yes, it's nature and it was always like that.

It will probably take an amazing amount of education to break past the generations of learned influences of Functional and Conflict oriented social order. Baby steps I suppose. As an aside the biggest frustration about these articles is that none of this is really new. Alfred Jost's rabbit embryo experiment was published in the 1940's. A 70+ year old experiment. It can be a tad disheartening when the scientific community has been tomes of research on this already, yet to so many people, articles like the one in the original post come across as shocking. Yeah, to us it reads as "Breaking News: Water is Wet".

As a person who loves biology and genetics, I simply adore this sort of research in general, but I just wished that more of the public would be curious enough to do 15 minutes of research.


???

Unfortunately it often seems that it takes society a long time to accept what scientists find to be obvious. Galileo was put under house arrest for what we now accept as the truth about the organization of our universe. We see it today, not only with gender issues, but with climate. Despite the best evidence, society takes time to assimilate and incorporate significant changes in perspective.


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Quote from: anne_indy on February 26, 2019, 06:43:32 AM
Unfortunately it often seems that it takes society a long time to accept what scientists find to be obvious. Galileo was put under house arrest for what we now accept as the truth about the organization of our universe. We see it today, not only with gender issues, but with climate. Despite the best evidence, society takes time to assimilate and incorporate significant changes in perspective.


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I don't think I've done 500 posts so I won't try to post links but these studies can be found with duckduckgo or other google like search engines.

I found several papers that agree that people who id themselves as transexual have certain parts of the brain that match who they ID with which is 180 degrees from their "naughty bits."  I seriously wish that folks in science would study some history to find that every generation has a large percentage that think agreement is the gold standard of science and are regularly proven wrong.  Today we have a large group that all agree trans people are pervs or mental patients so it must be true.  I think bringing attention to these male / female brain studies and encouraging larger studies would do much to reduce the idiotic masses saying these things.

Doesn't living on a tiny speck in the solar system which is a tiny speck in the galaxy which is a tiny speck in the universe and knowing we have never been anywhere else kind of hint we don't know everything?  Based on that I think science should be a little bit more humble?  How long has it been since we had dirt floors and the fastest way to get from point to point was a horse?

I once remarked that anyone who would willingly go through all the "tortures' of surgery, hair removal etc etc etc should be given the benefit of the doubt.  Right?

Quote from: GordonG on January 05, 2019, 09:22:04 PM
Can you give links to any of this scientific literature?

Apologies for the thread bump. I know I can't post links, but I'll post paper names and authors and make it very easy to get them.

For reference here, google also have an excellent academic search function called google scholar. So if you do searches like this on scholar dot google dot com, then you get to avoid all the non-academic stuff - useful as it cuts out all the media articles reporting on something (invariably without references!)

Regional gray matter variation in male-to-female transsexualism - Eileen Luders et al

and there is a good review article here:

Evidence Supporting the Biologic Nature of Gender Identity - Aruna Saraswat et al

Here's a useful collection of links to research showing that being transgender has its basis in prenatal brain development:

https://lizdaybyday.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/one-stop-trans-brain-research-list/

Autopsies have shown that there are certain sexually dimorphic brain regions where there are visible differences between the sexes in size and shape. When you look at those regions in trans people's brains, they more closely resemble those of cis people of the gender they identify as, rather than cis people of their assigned sex at birth. I'm of the opinion that the differences aren't confined to just these few small brain regions though, but there are probably subtle differences at the microscopic level between the way male and female brains are wired up, that extend all the way through the brain, and that affect just about every thing the brain does.

Experiments on animals have shown that it's easy to produce animals with a brain that is intersex, or even completely sex reversed, just by administering hormones to the pregnant mother. That suggests that being trans is the result of atypical hormone levels during our prenatal development (or genetic anomalies that mimic the effects of atypical hormone levels).

Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical industry hasn't properly appreciated the importance of hormones during prenatal development in determining which sex you develop as (and particularly, the future sex of your brain). For over 70 years, they've been promoting artificial female hormones (estrogens and progestins) to pregnant women as treatments for preventing miscarriages and premature births. Many of us MTF and transfeminine people in the over 40s age bracket were exposed to an artificial estrogen called DES, however I'm of the opinion that the effect isn't limited to DES, and it's likely that any medical use of hormones in pregnancy runs the risk of producing a transgender child. This would explain why more and more trans people are being born, even though DES was phased out 40 years ago. Some of the progestin class of hormones have also been shown to be capable of inducing male development in female fetuses, so medical hormones could also be a cause of FTM transgender.

I saw a documentary called : What Makes A Woman ? With Munroe Bergdorf.
She talks to alot of people about the topic and at the ending 39:00 she travels to Germany where she's been told that there are something(brain or gene) that says she's transgender.

Quote from: GordonG on January 05, 2019, 09:22:04 PM
Can you give links to any of this scientific literature?

Quote from: skipulus on January 06, 2019, 09:37:40 AM
Yes please me too

Quote from: JanePlain on April 16, 2019, 09:37:09 AM
I don't think I've done 500 posts so I won't try to post links but these studies can be found with duckduckgo or other google like search engines.

I found several papers that agree that people who id themselves as transexual have certain parts of the brain that match who they ID with which is 180 degrees from their "naughty bits."  I seriously wish that folks in science would study some history to find that every generation has a large percentage that think agreement is the gold standard of science and are regularly proven wrong.  Today we have a large group that all agree trans people are pervs or mental patients so it must be true.  I think bringing attention to these male / female brain studies and encouraging larger studies would do much to reduce the idiotic masses saying these things.

Doesn't living on a tiny speck in the solar system which is a tiny speck in the galaxy which is a tiny speck in the universe and knowing we have never been anywhere else kind of hint we don't know everything?  Based on that I think science should be a little bit more humble?  How long has it been since we had dirt floors and the fastest way to get from point to point was a horse?

I once remarked that anyone who would willingly go through all the "tortures' of surgery, hair removal etc etc etc should be given the benefit of the doubt.  Right?

Quote from: DKTGSupport on May 30, 2019, 05:19:30 PM
I saw a documentary called : What Makes A Woman ? With Munroe Bergdorf.
She talks to alot of people about the topic and at the ending 39:00 she travels to Germany where she's been told that there are something(brain or gene) that says she's transgender.

A review:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/may/16/what-makes-a-woman-review-a-show-that-asked-extraordinarily-complex-questions


The actual show

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/what-makes-a-woman/on-demand/67900-001

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A number of people have asked for links to actual studies, peer reviewed articles, and such.  Here is a good starter set to introduce the current state of research:

Links for online articles:

Beyond XX and XY: The Extraordinary Complexity of Sex Determination
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/beyond-xx-and-xy-the-extraordinary-complexity-of-sex-determination/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sa-editorial-social&utm_content=&utm_term=

Funct Neurol. 2009 Jan-Mar;24(1):17-28.
Sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation.
Swaab DF1, Garcia-Falgueras A.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19403051

"Are the Brains of Transgender People Different from Those of Cisgender People?"
"The Scientist", March 2018, Shawna Williams
https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/51914/title/Are-the-Brains-of-Transgender-People-Different-from-Those-of-Cisgender-People-/

"Sex redefined", "Nature", 18 February 2015, Claire Ainsworth
https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943#/spectrum

The September 2017 issue of Scientific American has a number of articles on gender and the brain.

Transsexual gene link identified
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7689007.stm

"Gender & Sexuality"
http://www.annefaustosterling.com/fields-of-inquiry/gender/

Assorted Publications on the Topic...
G. Spizzirri et al, "Grey and white matter volumes either in treatment-naïve or hormone-treated transgender women: a voxel-based morphometry study", Scientific Reports Volume 8, Article number: 736 (2018)
A.-M. Bao, D.F. Swaab, "Sexual differentiation of the human brain: Relation to gender identity, sexual orientation and neuropsychiatric disorders," Front Neuroendocrin, 32:214-26, 2011.
J.-N. Zhou et al., "A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality," Nature, 378:68-70, 1995.
F.P. Kruijver, "Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus," J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 85:2034-41, 2000.
A. Garcia-Falgueras, D. Swaab, "A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity," Brain, 131:3132-46, 2008.
S.M. Burke et al., "Male-typical visuospatial functioning in gynephilic girls with gender dysphoria—organizational and activational effects of testosterone," J Psychiatry Neurosci, 41:395-404, 2016.
G.S. Kranz et al., "White matter microstructure in transsexuals and controls investigated by diffusion tensor imaging," J Neurosci, 34:15466-75, 2014.
E. Hoekzema et al., "Regional volumes and spatial volumetric distribution of gray matter in the gender dysphoric brain," Psychoneuroendocrino, 55:59-71, 2015.
L. Zubiaurre-Elorza et al., "Cortical thickness in untreated transsexuals," Cereb Cortex, 23:2855-62, 2013.
A. Guillamon et al., "A review of the status of brain structure research in transsexualism," Arch Sex Behav, 45:1615-48, 2016.
J. Junger et al., "More than just two sexes: the neural correlates of voice gender perception in gender dysphoria," PLOS ONE, 9:e111672, 2014.
I. Savic, S. Arver, "Sex dimorphism of the brain in male-to-female transsexuals," Cereb Cortex, 21:2525-33, 2011.
J.D. Feusner et al., "Intrinsic network connectivity and own body perception in gender dysphoria," Brain Imaging Behav, 11:964-76, 2017.
E.S. Smith et al., "The transsexual brain—A review of findings on the neural basis of transsexualism," Neurosci Biobehav R, 59:251-66, 2015.