Just wondering...
Does it really make sense to say that the transsexual brain and gender identity form within the womb?
Just after birth, babies know little more than how to cry, sleep, drink, etc. Would an infant really need a gender identity? So why would it develop before birth, before it can even be expressed?
Does it not make more sense to say that gender identity, the internal consciousness of being male or female, probably develops later on? Do babies even have consciousness at all?
Thanks :)
I had basically a female-wired brain since I was a fetus, but I had no internal awareness of gender until I was about 4.
Great question! You'll probably do better in the Health forum than the News area, though.
Hugs, Devlyn
People display gender differences in behavior before they even can speak. Gender differences start appearing in the brain before birth.
Yes, brains in general mostly develop in the womb.
Quote from: Edge on November 07, 2014, 08:13:36 PM
Yes, brains in general mostly develop in the womb.
And deteriorate when watching TV. A mind is a terrible thing
to waste.
Hence the whole environment in the womb affecting gender identity is very plausible.
I was clearly born with a female brain so I absolutely believe it all starts in the womb. I didn't discover it until much later though.
I was born back in the stone age and we didn't have the interweb (heck, color tvs were still a new concept back then!). I lived a large part of my life in a very trans-ignorant part of the US so I had no way to find out that transgender was a thing until I was in my 40s. Once I stumbled across it I knew immediately that it explained everything - the feelings I was having and the disconnection I had felt and all of the trouble I had experienced all of my life with trying to fit into a guy's world as a non-guy.
Back then the pharmaceutical industry was playing fast and loose with drugs with no government supervision; drugs like diethylstilbestrol and thalidomide were sprung on the unsuspecting public and it was only years later that the damage those drugs did became apparent. There is no telling what I was exposed to in the womb and what that exposure did to me. However, one only has to look at the mounting evidence of what endocrine disruptors do to a fetus in the womb to grasp what I think happened to me, and what I think happened to a lot of other people from that era.
Quote from: Eva Marie on November 07, 2014, 08:28:16 PM
I was clearly born with a female brain so I absolutely believe it all starts in the womb. I didn't discover it until much later though....
....Back then the pharmaceutical industry was playing fast and loose with drugs with no government supervision ( they still are ); drugs like diethylstilbestrol and thalidomide were sprung on the unsuspecting public and it was only years later that the damage those drugs did became apparent. There is no telling what I was exposed to in the womb and what that exposure did to me. However, one only has to look at the mounting evidence of what endocrine disruptors do to a fetus in the womb to grasp what I think happened to me, and what I think happened to a lot of other people from that era.
You are actually quite correct in your assessment. One has only to 'Google' "EDC's" or endocrine disrupting chemicals to be horrified and astounded at the amount of damage these EDC's are still causing.
In a nutshell what happens is that these EDC's interfere, (disrupt/interfere with the normal bonding processes of/) with the androgen receptors in/on the cells of the developing brain in the fetus. This prevents the normal masculinization of the brain coded into and normally triggered (programed into), by the genetic instructions on the Y chromosome.
This is why the M/F chromosomal, XX vs. XY argument is such a hoax perpetrated on the ignorant. All the chromosome does is carry a huge variation of genes, (millions/billions(?), each with their own set if discreet instructions or chemical triggers. If something like and EDC or nutritional deficiency interferes with those 'instructions' then all bets are off. Anything can and often does happen.
Now I am no biologist and I am hoping someone with a greater understanding of these biochemical mechanisms can do a better job of explaining this than I have just attempted to do.
This also begs the question as to how these mechanisms work in the cases of FtM. Could it be that the instructions on the xx are somehow corrupted and if so, how?
I've had a male identity since I was 2. I don't think being trans is a choice; I think it's biological (not speaking for all but for many of us). I'm looking forward to more research on this because I think it will help with acceptance.
I'm surprised this is still being debated. A lot, dare I say the majority of transsexuals knew from early on.
Quote from: noah732 on November 07, 2014, 05:55:32 PM
Just wondering...
Does it really make sense to say that the transsexual brain and gender identity form within the womb?
Just after birth, babies know little more than how to cry, sleep, drink, etc. Would an infant really need a gender identity? So why would it develop before birth, before it can even be expressed?
Does it not make more sense to say that gender identity, the internal consciousness of being male or female, probably develops later on? Do babies even have consciousness at all?
Thanks :)
It is the brain structures and connections that would determine your gender identity that develop along a male to female axis during the fetal stage.
and yes, a level of consciousness develops as early as 6 weeks of development
Quote from: noah732 on November 07, 2014, 05:55:32 PM
Just wondering...
Does it really make sense to say that the transsexual brain and gender identity form within the womb?
Yes. There's abundant evidence to show that there are physical differences in the structure of men's and women's brains that affect things such as behaviour, spatial awareness, aptitude for languages etc, and that these differences arise before birth, during the second and third trimester of your prenatal development. Gender identity appears to be part of those differences too.
Quote
Just after birth, babies know little more than how to cry, sleep, drink, etc. Would an infant really need a gender identity? So why would it develop before birth, before it can even be expressed?
Does it not make more sense to say that gender identity, the internal consciousness of being male or female, probably develops later on? Do babies even have consciousness at all?
Thanks :)
For a long time, the prevailing theory was that babies are born "gender neutral", and people could be made to identify as either sex depending on how the parents treat them during their first 3 or 4 years of life. According to that theory, if a baby is born intersex then they can be surgically assigned male or female depending on which is easiest for the doctors and the parents, and either way they'll grow up happily adjusted to their assigned sex without knowing any different. Thousands of intersex babies ended up being butchered with unnecessary cosmetic surgery on their genitals as a result, surgery which has often gone horribly wrong and left them with chronic health problems, loss of sensation or genital pain that means they can't achieve orgasm, and genitals that don't match the gender they identify as. Under that theory, transness was also regarded as a mental illness, the result of improper socialisation during the formative years.
The gender neutrality theory has since been shown to be a complete load of rubbish, initially through an infamous failed experiment (the "John/Joan" case):
http://web.archive.org/web/20090331071817/http://www.infocirc.org/rollston.htm
and subsequently through follow up studies of other babies who were reassigned to the wrong sex.
As far as transness is concerned, there is research showing physical similarities between the brains of trans women and cis women, even where the trans women haven't had HRT. If you look through some of the posts in this forum, you'll find that many of us (myself included) have a type of body structure that's commonly associated with intersex conditions, and often other symptoms of being intersexed too. So there's plenty of evidence that transness is a kind of intersex condition, except one where the main thing that's been affected is the brain rather than the genitals.
One thing I've been trying to make people here (and on other trans forums) aware of, is that medical hormones could be causing a lot of cases of transsexuality. There's one drug in particular, called DES, that has a very strong association with MTF transsexuality, e.g. see:
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,157142.0.html
and
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,84224.0.html
DES was withdrawn from use 40 years ago, however if one hormone treatment can cause large numbers of people to end up trans without anyone realising what's happened, then it's very likely that other hormone treatments are doing it too.
RE: FtMs According to one of my therapists, most of her FtMs are either one of twins or adopted or were high risk pregnancies when progesterone was given to prevent miscarriage. She's getting her doctor's degree in human sexuality so she's all into the studies, too. According to her research, gender identity is developed in the first and last trimesters.
I'm in the adopted class.
For twins, just like w/ nutrients, the hormones are not equally shared, so one twin gets more than the other.
In high stress pregnancies particularly in the last trimester, (ie in adoption decisions) the mother's adrenal glands kick in overtime, which dumps massive amounts of testosterone.
My knowledge of progesterone is fuzzy here, so someone else will have to explain the effects of that one better than me.
So, that made enough sense to me that I'm okay with that explanation.
Chris
Quote from: FriendsCallMeChris on November 10, 2014, 09:09:47 AM
RE: FtMs According to one of my therapists, most of her FtMs are either one of twins or adopted or were high risk pregnancies when progesterone was given to prevent miscarriage. She's getting her doctor's degree in human sexuality so she's all into the studies, too. According to her research, gender identity is developed in the first and last trimesters.
I'm in the adopted class.
For twins, just like w/ nutrients, the hormones are not equally shared, so one twin gets more than the other.
In high stress pregnancies particularly in the last trimester, (ie in adoption decisions) the mother's adrenal glands kick in overtime, which dumps massive amounts of testosterone.
My knowledge of progesterone is fuzzy here, so someone else will have to explain the effects of that one better than me.
So, that made enough sense to me that I'm okay with that explanation.
Chris
I see. My mom had two miscarriages before (both males) having me so I tend to wonder if she was given progesterone to prevent a 3rd miscarriage. And she was in labor for several hours with me too so I wonder if that stress and pain caused my body-brain mismatch. Hmm, I should ask.
Quote from: FriendsCallMeChris on November 10, 2014, 09:09:47 AM
RE: FtMs According to one of my therapists, most of her FtMs are either one of twins or adopted or were high risk pregnancies when progesterone was given to prevent miscarriage. She's getting her doctor's degree in human sexuality so she's all into the studies, too. According to her research, gender identity is developed in the first and last trimesters.
I'm in the adopted class.
For twins, just like w/ nutrients, the hormones are not equally shared, so one twin gets more than the other.
In high stress pregnancies particularly in the last trimester, (ie in adoption decisions) the mother's adrenal glands kick in overtime, which dumps massive amounts of testosterone.
My knowledge of progesterone is fuzzy here, so someone else will have to explain the effects of that one better than me.
So, that made enough sense to me that I'm okay with that explanation.
Chris
Wow, that's really interesting. My mom just revealed to me a couple days ago that she was given progesterone when she was pregnant with me. I also had a very difficult birth. Maybe I should bring this up to her.
Quote from: Contravene on November 10, 2014, 08:13:09 PM
Wow, that's really interesting. My mom just revealed to me a couple days ago that she was given progesterone when she was pregnant with me. I also had a very difficult birth. Maybe I should bring this up to her.
This is very interesting from my point of view too, because, ever since I found out about the link between DES and MTF transsexuality, I've had a suspicion that progestins could be causing FTM transsexuality.
Doctors don't usually administer progesterone itself to pregnant women, because it has a relatively short biological half life and so has to be given more or less every day. Instead, they usually prescribe one of a range of synthetic hormones called progestins, which are designed to target the same hormone receptors that progesterone does. However, one of the problems with progestins is that most of them cross react with androgen receptors and, to a greater or lesser extent, mimic some of the effects of testosterone (the first generation of progestins were actually derivatives of testosterone!). Although I've mainly just been looking at the effects of DES, it certainly seems very reasonable to me that exposure to progestins could cause FTM transsexuality.
There's actually a known problem of progestin induced virilization, in which baby girls were born with intersexed or sometimes completely male genitals after their mothers were given treatment with progestins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progestin-induced_virilisation
That article talks mainly about danazol, and makes out that exposure to medically prescribed androgenizing hormones is a rare thing, however a lot of women (probably in the millions) were given androgenizing progestins between about 1950 and the mid 1970s, when the fact that they were causing male development in female fetuses was finally spotted. Since progestins were often co-prescribed with DES, in most cases exposure to these drugs is likely to have followed a similar pattern to DES, and taken place too late in the pregnancy to have much effect on genital development, but right in the middle of the critical time when sexually dimorphic brain development is taking place.
Quote
According to one of my therapists, most of her FtMs are either one of twins or adopted or were high risk pregnancies when progesterone was given to prevent miscarriage. She's getting her doctor's degree in human sexuality so she's all into the studies, too. According to her research, gender identity is developed in the first and last trimesters.
The research on sheep and monkeys shows that the critical period for sexually dimorphic brain development doesn't start until after genital development has finished. If the same applies to humans, that means it can't start until at least 13 weeks after conception, which rules out the first trimester. I'm fairly sure that the exposure in my case was during the second trimester only, and I had normal male development during the first and third trimesters. While I don't identify as a woman, I have a gender identity that's kind of a mixture of male and female. So I think the brain development responsible for gender identity later in life must take place throughout the second and third trimesters, and gender identity must be the summation of lots and lots of little differences between the sexes that are built into the structure of the brain during that time (rather than being due to any one specific thing the brain does).
There's a big difference between gender identity and sexual dimorphism.
Unless you want to make an argument for biological essentialism with regards to gender, no a foetus does not develop a "gender identity" in the womb.
Quote from: cathyrains on November 11, 2014, 08:30:32 AM
There's a big difference between gender identity and sexual dimorphism.
What is that difference and can you link the studies to back up your claim?
Quote from: Edge on November 11, 2014, 08:42:48 AM
What is that difference and can you link the studies to back up your claim?
The difference is one of definition. I would think that was obvious from a transsexual PoV. Perhaps you have a different understanding of their meaning in which case I can neither agree nor disagree with your PoV.
Quote from: cathyrains on November 11, 2014, 08:30:32 AM
There's a big difference between gender identity and sexual dimorphism.
Unless you want to make an argument for biological essentialism with regards to gender, no a foetus does not develop a "gender identity" in the womb.
Gender identity is the product of a specific brain configuration, it is a form of sexual dimorphism.
Like all sexual dimorphic characteristics it manifest along an axis, and like other sexual dimorphic characteristics is biological in nature.
The development and expression of sexual dimorphic characteristics have been ascribed, without a doubt, to an interplay of gene expression, epigenetic factors, and environmental stimulus.
Quote from: peky on November 11, 2014, 08:51:48 AM
Gender identity is the product of a specific brain configuration, it is a form of sexual dimorphism.
It is? News to me!
Although if you want to continue down the line of biological essentialism then I suppose any feeling, emotion or sense of identity ultimately exists as a neurological state. Frankly I'm not sure we have that strong a grip on neuro pscychology in adults much less foetuses.
Quote from: cathyrains on November 11, 2014, 08:54:29 AM
It is? News to me!
Although if you want to continue down the line of biological essentialism then I suppose any feeling, emotion or sense of identity ultimately exists as a neurological state. Frankly I'm not sure we have that strong a grip on neuro pscychology in adults much less foetuses.
There is plethora of things that can change brain structure and fuction and thereby changing your feelings, emotions, beliefs, and yes your identity too...
For example there are the documented cases of personality changes due to exposure to xeno-chemicals. The most relevant to our conversation is that of the results of smoking a common drug, usually used to treat respiratory ailments. Well, there are a documented case of a cis-heterosexual male who after smoking said substance self reported to an emergency center, and demanded immediate SRS. The man in questions never had manifested any trans behavior, according to family members. The man continued to demand SRS for the next few days because he claimed that he was: "a women trapped in a man body." Finally, when the drug effects wore out, the man no longer requested SRS, or claimed to be a transgender. I am sure this is one his buddies and family will never let him get out of it...LOL
I know folks want to believe that there is something else behind the "human mind" other than neurobiology but the evidence for it, scientifically speaking, is non-existing.
In the other hand, the evidence for the neurological theory of the mind and consciousness is overwhelming ...
Of course philosophically or religiously speaking, you know matters of faith, we are free to believe what ever we want... that is at least in my country...
and we can happily agree to disagree...but not scientifically speaking
Quote from: peky on November 11, 2014, 09:25:21 AM
There is plethora of things that can change brain structure and fuction and thereby changing your feelings, emotions, beliefs, and yes your identity too...
For example there are the documented cases of personality changes due to exposure to xeno-chemicals. The most relevant to our conversation is that of the results of smoking a common drug, usually used to treat respiratory ailments. Well, there are a documented case of a cis-heterosexual male who after smoking said substance self reported to an emergency center, and demanded immediate SRS. The man in questions never had manifested any trans behavior, according to family members. The man continued to demand SRS for the next few days because he claimed that he was: "a women trapped in a man body." Finally, when the drug effects wore out, the man no longer requested SRS, or claimed to be a transgender. I am sure this is one his buddies and family will never let him get out of it...LOL
I know folks want to believe that there is something else behind the "human mind" other than neurobiology but the evidence for it, scientifically speaking, is non-existing.
In the other hand, the evidence for the neurological theory of the mind and consciousness is overwhelming ...
Of course philosophically or religiously speaking, you know matters of faith, we are free to believe what ever we want... that is at least in my country...
and we can happily agree to disagree...but not scientifically speaking
I have no issue with mind/brain dualism and quite happily accept, nay insist on the neurological theory of mind. However one must be cautious not to fall into neurological determinism.
One of the most important differences to remember is that structures that affect gender identity and sexuality are "white matter" structures. They are "base" structures, upon which everything else gets built after. So yes, it makes sense that if these structures get switched in utero that everything that comes after results in someone being trans.
All the post birth development is almost exclusively grey matter neural development and connections forming. Those white matter structures had to be in place and functioning well before that in order for the grey matter (thinking areas) to properly develop later.
Quote from: HughE on November 11, 2014, 05:54:40 AM
This is very interesting from my point of view too, because, ever since I found out about the link between DES and MTF transsexuality, I've had a suspicion that progestins could be causing FTM transsexuality.
Doctors don't usually administer progesterone itself to pregnant women, because it has a relatively short biological half life and so has to be given more or less every day. Instead, they usually prescribe one of a range of synthetic hormones called progestins, which are designed to target the same hormone receptors that progesterone does. However, one of the problems with progestins is that most of them cross react with androgen receptors and, to a greater or lesser extent, mimic some of the effects of testosterone (the first generation of progestins were actually derivatives of testosterone!). Although I've mainly just been looking at the effects of DES, it certainly seems very reasonable to me that exposure to progestins could cause FTM transsexuality.
There's actually a known problem of progestin induced virilization, in which baby girls were born with intersexed or sometimes completely male genitals after their mothers were given treatment with progestins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progestin-induced_virilisation
That article talks mainly about danazol, and makes out that exposure to medically prescribed androgenizing hormones is a rare thing, however a lot of women (probably in the millions) were given androgenizing progestins between about 1950 and the mid 1970s, when the fact that they were causing male development in female fetuses was finally spotted. Since progestins were often co-prescribed with DES, in most cases exposure to these drugs is likely to have followed a similar pattern to DES, and taken place too late in the pregnancy to have much effect on genital development, but right in the middle of the critical time when sexually dimorphic brain development is taking place.
The research on sheep and monkeys shows that the critical period for sexually dimorphic brain development doesn't start until after genital development has finished. If the same applies to humans, that means it can't start until at least 13 weeks after conception, which rules out the first trimester. I'm fairly sure that the exposure in my case was during the second trimester only, and I had normal male development during the first and third trimesters. While I don't identify as a woman, I have a gender identity that's kind of a mixture of male and female. So I think the brain development responsible for gender identity later in life must take place throughout the second and third trimesters, and gender identity must be the summation of lots and lots of little differences between the sexes that are built into the structure of the brain during that time (rather than being due to any one specific thing the brain does).
That was really informative, thanks! I'm definitely going to look into this because I'm interested in learning more. I'm also going to try asking my mom about what other hormones she was taking at the time, if any, and whether or not she took the same things when she was pregnant with my siblings.
I have a sister who is
very atypical but still identifies as female so I always wondered if it was genetic or if maybe my brain got the full flush of male hormones in the womb which resulted in me being trans while my sister only got a limited amount of the same hormones. According to my parents, a lot of the women on my mother's side are pretty atypical so maybe it's a combination.
Quote from: peky on November 11, 2014, 08:51:48 AM
Gender identity is the product of a specific brain configuration
No it isn't.
Quote from: Dread_Faery on November 12, 2014, 05:56:26 PM
Quote from: peky on November 11, 2014, 08:51:48 AM
Gender identity is the product of a specific brain configuration, it is a form of sexual dimorphism.
No it isn't.
Can we at least agree that gender identity appears not to be subject to change by an effort of will? That, unlike deciding you're a Catholic or that you're vegetarian, you can't decide to change your identity, can't be talked into another gender identity, can't be conditioned to be a particular gender identity, etc.
That, to me, would be a strong indication that something physical in the brain his biologically "hardwired" to be a specific gender identity rather than it being the results of some thought pattern or experience.
Quote from: suzifrommd on November 12, 2014, 06:20:00 PM
No it isn't.
Can we at least agree that gender identity appears not to be subject to change by an effort of will? That, unlike deciding you're a Catholic or that you're vegetarian, you can't decide to change your identity, can't be talked into another gender identity, can't be conditioned to be a particular gender identity, etc.
That, to me, would be a strong indication that something physical in the brain his biologically "hardwired" to be a specific gender identity rather than it being the results of some thought pattern or experience.
I would argue that gender identity, while persistent, is also progressive. Extrapolating back to a foetal "mind" is therefore not particularly helpful or useful.
Quote from: suzifrommd on November 12, 2014, 06:20:00 PM
No it isn't.
Can we at least agree that gender identity appears not to be subject to change by an effort of will? That, unlike deciding you're a Catholic or that you're vegetarian, you can't decide to change your identity, can't be talked into another gender identity, can't be conditioned to be a particular gender identity, etc.
That, to me, would be a strong indication that something physical in the brain his biologically "hardwired" to be a specific gender identity rather than it being the results of some thought pattern or experience.
Gender identity is constructed from a variety of internal and external cues, both consciously and subconsciously. Among those cues is the interaction between your sense of physical self and your physical reality. Gendered behaviour and gender roles are socially constructed, and are imposed upon individuals from a very young age, these can be internalised and normalised, and eventually imposed behaviour can become being seen as an innate trait. The truth is it's more like a positive feedback loop, certain behaviours are gendered, people of that gender seen behaving that way are seen as proving that the behaviour is gendered, thus strengthening the notion that that behaviour is an innate trait to that gender.
What people get wrong is believing that because gender is a social construct that it doesn't have profound effects on people's lives and behaviour, basically the see socially constructed as not being real.
I also reject any notion of there being inherently male and female brains, as going down that path leads to gender essentialism and there being a right and wrong kind of trans. The truth is there are structural differences between male and female brains, but their so slight as to have not tangible effect on behaviour.
Just to add, this is what I believe as it aligns with my own experiences and many of my friends experiences. It allows for persistent and fixed feelings of gender dysphoria as you can't flip a switch to reboot your sense of self to align with your physical reality, without messy assertions of neurosexism and innate gendered behaviour.
Quote from: Dread_Faery on November 13, 2014, 07:10:01 AM
I also reject any notion of there being inherently male and female brains, as going down that path leads to gender essentialism and there being a right and wrong kind of trans. The truth is there are structural differences between male and female brains, but their so slight as to have not tangible effect on behaviour.
How would you explain the phenomenon of male babies given sex changes to correct anatomical anomalies and not being told about it, being raised as girls in all ways, but insisting they are male when they are old enough articulate that?
Isn't what you're describing exactly the scientific understanding that led to John Money's downfall?
Quote from: Dread_Faery on November 13, 2014, 07:10:01 AM
I also reject any notion of there being inherently male and female brains, as going down that path leads to gender essentialism and there being a right and wrong kind of trans. The truth is there are structural differences between male and female brains, but their so slight as to have not tangible effect on behaviour.
I guess it comes down to how one defines "gender." Personally, I reject the notion that gender is the same as gender roles, stereotypes, behaviour, clothes, etc. To me, gender is something much more abstract that we don't fully understand yet, but is a part of the bigger picture of who we are rather than something that controls who we are. If that makes sense. According to what information we have so far on gender (my definition anyway) and the brain (which, admittedly is currently far from complete, but that doesn't make the information we have learned any less), I would say that gender is determined by those brain structures, but those brain structures (and gender) do not determine patterns of behaviour that are illogically associated with gender.
I hope I made sense. I'm not meaning to argue. Just explaining as best I can how I see it. I should also point out that I'm a fan of science, a biology student, and a brain fanboy whose long term plans involve becoming a research neuroscientist because I think brains are the most fascinating things ever.
Left-handedness is also believed to develop in the womb due to hormone imbalances.
I think that the brain is pretty fluid. I certainly do not believe that everything is set in stone at birth. Hormones might induce certain structures to develop differently. What enables that to become fixed in nature, I simply do not know. If it is some aberration in the brain, why can't we fix it with psychology? Science seems to be able to cure almost any mental disorder, so why is this gender thing so darn persistent? Why doesn't electroshocks work? why doesn't chemical induced dissociation work? why don't we perform brain surgery to rectify this little problem of ours? Well, because we simply don't know where the problem is located. Maybe identity is just the ghost of the mind, the shadow of the soul, which cannot be captured and dissected?
Science is useful, but I do not like dehumanizing everything into that nihilistic, pessimistic abyss of bits and numbers. One can produce models, theories, and explanations but the map isn't the same as the territory. A thought might be a chemical chain reaction of random flickering neurons, but that same seemingly simple chain of firing neurons produced Beethoven's majestic 5th symphony. And there is no trace of creativity to be found in the human brain. So much for randomness and predictability. Ordo ab Chao, maybe.
Quote from: PinkCloud on November 13, 2014, 06:10:04 PM
I think that the brain is pretty fluid.
It is. This is known as neuroplasticity. What it refers to though are the synapses. The connections that are made between neurons can change. This is huge in a lot of ways, but does not have an affect on how many neurons are in a particular structure or the amount of myelin.
Quote from: PinkCloud on November 13, 2014, 06:10:04 PMIf it is some aberration in the brain, why can't we fix it with psychology?
I won't touch the aberration remark. As for why psychology can't fix it, that's because psychology can only work on changing ways of thinking (ie synapses). It cannot change the structures. To me, the fact that it doesn't work is further evidence of it being a structural thing.
Quote from: PinkCloud on November 13, 2014, 06:10:04 PMScience seems to be able to cure almost any mental disorder, so why is this gender thing so darn persistent?
Mental disorders are far from being cured.
Quote from: PinkCloud on November 13, 2014, 06:10:04 PMWhy doesn't electroshocks work?
Electroshock is also unable to change structures within the brain. It's meant to change the synapses. (Personally, I'm dubious about whether it works for anything other than frying people's short term memories, but whatever.)
Quote from: PinkCloud on November 13, 2014, 06:10:04 PMWhy doesn't chemical induced dissociation work?
Dissociation is a symptom of mental illness and I'm not sure how inducing that chemically can be considered "working."
Quote from: PinkCloud on November 13, 2014, 06:10:04 PMWhy don't we perform brain surgery to rectify this little problem of ours? Well, because we simply don't know where the problem is located. Maybe identity is just the ghost of the mind, the shadow of the soul, which cannot be captured and dissected?
Personally, I think it has more to do with the fact that no one in their right mind would perform brain surgery like that unless the patient was going to die of a tumour or something. Brain surgery is extremely risky. Aside from the high risk of death, we don't understand all the details of how the brain works and removing or changing anything could have devastating consequences. It's not so much about the location as it is what are all the things those structures do.
There are many case studies of brain damage and people who have had areas of the brain removed. I'd recommend giving them a look for a better understanding of what I mean.
Quote from: PinkCloud on November 13, 2014, 06:10:04 PMScience is useful, but I do not like dehumanizing everything into that nihilistic, pessimistic abyss of bits and numbers. One can produce models, theories, and explanations but the map isn't the same as the territory. A thought might be a chemical chain reaction of random flickering neurons, but that same seemingly simple chain of firing neurons produced Beethoven's majestic 5th symphony. And there is no trace of creativity to be found in the human brain. So much for randomness and predictability. Ordo ab Chao, maybe.
... Wha...?
That makes no sense. How is a curiosity and fascination about the world nihilistic and pessimistic? How can anyone look at how a chain of firing neurons causing Beethoven's majestic 5th symphony and not find it absolutely beautiful? How can one think that creativity can't be found in the human brain? What about Beethoven's 5th symphony? Is that not creative? Is that not beautiful? How can it possibly be dehumanizing to look at how humans are able to create these things?
Sorry, but this isn't something I will ever understand nor do I ever want to.
A collection of references about the neurobiological research of the last 25 years and how it relates to being trans.
One Stop Trans Brain Research List (http://lizdaybyday.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/one-stop-trans-brain-research-list/)
Thank you, Liz Marie! Your one-stop list is a great resource for those of us interested in the subject.
I think it is important to understand that this is a very complicated subject. The brain differences between trans people and cisgender people are substantial, important, and are documented to occur in utero. But at the same time it is important to realize that other factors may play a role here too - the entire "nurture" question.
I do not believe this is a "nature vs nurture" debate at all. Rather, I believe it is a combination of both but that the prenatal hormonal issues are a key component in being trans.
Finally, something I think I forgot to link on my research page is this presentation to the AMA annual meeting in 2011.
http://media01.commpartners.com/AMA/sexual_identity_jan_2011/index.html
The presentation is about 70 minutes long and documents in utero hormonal issues and how they apply to being trans as well as LGB.
It's highly counterintuitive, but the sex you develop as has nothing to do with whether you have a Y chromosome or not. Instead it depends on whether there's androgenic hormones (testosterone and DHT) present during your prenatal development.
In normal male development, the presence of a Y chromosome causes the fetus to develop testicles, which then promptly start churning out the hormones required for male development. However, it's the hormones and not the Y chromosome that cause the fetus to develop as male, and if anything prevents the hormones from being produced or doing their job, then the fetus will instead develop as female instead of male. There's two medical conditions which prove this to be the case: Swyer's Syndrome, and Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS). In Swyers Syndrome, the testicles fail to form and so no androgenic hormones are produced; in CAIS, the testicles form and produce their hormones as normal, however a mutation to the gene for the androgen receptor means that the cells throughout that person's body are completely unable to detect or react to androgenic hormones, so all their development takes place as if those hormones weren't there. Either way, a person who is genetically male (46,XY karyotype) develops as female, and people with these conditions look just like ordinary women, so much so that often the condition isn't even picked up until puberty, when menstruation fails to start.
CAIS is a particularly good example proving how the whole process of sexual development depends entirely on hormones, since, as rare DSDs go, it's relatively common (there are thousands of CAIS women alive today), so people with the condition have been well studied. Also, the only difference between these people and the genetically male people who develop as male is that their androgen receptors don't work (or are missing altogether). Everything else, including hormones, enzymes, Y chromosome and other genes, is unaffected. That basically proves that, in humans, male development is entirely driven through androgen receptors (and, without androgen receptor activation, female development will occur instead).
The really important thing from our point of view is that CAIS women seem to behave exactly like ordinary women, and seem to be universally happy with being female. Out of the thousands of CAIS women worldwide, I'm aware of just a single recorded instance of one with a male gender identity (that one case on it's own doesn't mean a lot, as it could be due to chimerism, or a mutation to a gene somewhere that causes male brain development to take place even in the absence of androgen receptor activation).
By contrast, male babies who were born with a condition called cloacal extropy (which has traditionally involved reassignment to female as part of the surgical repair), had very high rates of dissatisfaction with a female gender identity (in fact it looked like an unmitigated disaster in the paper I read - about half of the patients who'd been reassigned to female had spontaneously reverted to living as male, and even the ones still living as female didn't sound happy about it).
What this shows is that your gender identity later in life depends on brain development that took place before you were born, and whether your identity ends up male or female depends on on whether or not there were androgenic hormones present during the time that brain development was taking place.
The thing I've been trying to make people aware of, is that doctors have for decades been in the habit of giving pregnant women drugs in doses that would suppress testosterone production in adult men, with most of the heaviest exposure to these substances tending to occur too late in the pregnancy to affect genital development or physical appearance, but during what appears to be the critical period when the brain undergoes its sexually dimorphic development. Either a male fetus is somehow magically immune to the effects of these drugs, or they've inadvertently created millions of people who look male but have female brains. Based on what I've seen of the effects of DES, it's the latter, which would explain why there's suddenly so many MTF trans folk about!
Whether medical hormones can also cause FTM transsexuality I don't know, however I suspect some can, and some of the replies to this thread appear to back up that suspicion.
Exactly, Hugh. All of the groundwork gets laid in utero, in particular during the 8th-16th week of pregnancy when the sex glands begin their descent from the base of the brain down to the pelvis. It is at this time that sexual hormone production begins in earnest and anything that disrupts that production or alters the "normal" ratio of testosterone to estrogen (females produce testosterone too, just the ratios are very different) can cause variations, particularly in the brain itself because the brain is more isolated from the rest of the body due to the brain-blood barrier.
For example, at the age of 38 I was diagnosed with a media-stinal germ cell tumor. This tumor appears to be the direct result of sex gland material that gets deposited in the chest (media-stinal) during the descent of the sex glands during the 8th-16th weeks of pregnancy. My oncologist, Dr. Robert Amato, one of the leading researchers in the world at that time on media-stinal germ cell tumors, said that in his data every single patient had mothers who were heavy smokers during pregnancy. This latent germ cell material then lays dormant in the chest until it randomly gets activated and becomes one of the fastest growing tumors in the cancer world.
When I began therapy with my therapist years later, I reached out to Dr. Amato, who was no longer at MD Anderson Cancer Center but over a Baylor and asked him if the mechanism that would cause tissue to break off and form a latent germ cell tumor would also cause disruptions in production of testosterone. His reply was "Absolutely!" And that it might take weeks to return to normal levels of hormonal production.
Though I cannot absolutely prove it, the data now strongly suggests that my own transgender nature, which I've had since very young is a direct result of this.
Also, there are XX males, who have what is known as de la Chapelle syndrome. It is caused by unequal crossing over between X and Y chromosomes during meiosis in the father, which results in the X chromosome containing the normally-male SRY gene. When this X combines with a normal X from the mother during fertilization, the result is an XX male.
This syndrome occurs in approximately four or five in 100,000 individuals, making it less common than Klinefelter syndrome.
According to research at the University of Oklahoma health science centers, most XX males are not stereotypically feminine and are typical boys and men although other reports suggest that facial hair growth is usually poor and libido is diminished, with notable exceptions.
So once again, genes themselves are not the determinants but only the blueprints and if those blueprints are implemented in a non-standard way, variations result.
Since we know that extremes of hormonal variations, such as de la Chapelle babies and AIS babies are possible, does it make sense to believe that less extreme variations might occur that explain being trans? Yes, that makes a lot of sense.
And we discover that DES babies (from the 1940s and 1950s when mothers were routinely administered DES during pregnancy which has since been banned precisely because it interferes with hormonal actions) have extremely high rates of being trans, being gay, and being intersex.
So all of the evidence begins to point towards hormonal variations as a root condition in being trans. And then the neurobiological research that I provided above shows that researchers now accept and began looking for proof of this in the brain and have found it in abundance.
Note that this does not discount the impact of "nurture" in this equation, but instead simply asserts that in the majority of cases a hormonal variation during pregnancy is likely what created the preconditions to being trans later in life. It would not surprise me at all to discover that this precondition is often coupled to other "nurture" factors but I would also wager money that in the majority of trans cases, the underlying brain structures are exactly as expected - for MtFs a female structured brain in a male body, and for FtMs a male structured brain in a female body.
Quote from: Edge on November 13, 2014, 09:50:05 AM
I guess it comes down to how one defines "gender." Personally, I reject the notion that gender is the same as gender roles, stereotypes, behaviour, clothes, etc. To me, gender is something much more abstract that we don't fully understand yet, but is a part of the bigger picture of who we are rather than something that controls who we are. If that makes sense. According to what information we have so far on gender (my definition anyway) and the brain (which, admittedly is currently far from complete, but that doesn't make the information we have learned any less), I would say that gender is determined by those brain structures, but those brain structures (and gender) do not determine patterns of behaviour that are illogically associated with gender.
I hope I made sense. I'm not meaning to argue. Just explaining as best I can how I see it. I should also point out that I'm a fan of science, a biology student, and a brain fanboy whose long term plans involve becoming a research neuroscientist because I think brains are the most fascinating things ever.
I actually kind of agree with you, I believe there is a structural element involved in the construction of ones gender identity, I just vehemently believe it has no effect on behaviour, because neurosexism really sucks. And I also believe that constructed gender roles and norms of gendered behaviour can and do have a profound effect on an individuals gender identity, mainly due to the synaptic rewriting of neuroplasticity.
I talk about this subconscious sense of self a lot and it is important, especially if it clashes with the physical reality of someone's body. This isn't something that is taught or learnt, I believe it to be innate and probably structural in nature, i.e. having a brain wired to expect testosterone but instead having an endocrine system flooded with estrogen. It would cause an innate physical wrongness with your body, which is what I believe dysphoria to be, a mis-match between what the brain expects the body to be and how it actually is. But it's not the totality of gender identity, merely a part of it. This is what I mean why I say that we construct our gender identity from a variety if cues, both learned and innate, conscious and subconscious. Kind of similar to the way we construct our full identity.
Mostly this is speculation on my part, I've thrown the idea at a few friends and it fits with their experiences as well as mine, it's most likely flawed, but at this moment in time it works for my understanding of being trans because it neatly torpedoes what I see as flawed, biologically essentialist explanations of being trans.
Quote from: Dread_Faery on November 13, 2014, 07:10:01 AMThe truth is there are structural differences between male and female brains, but their so slight as to have not tangible effect on behaviour.
They DO have a tangible effect on behaviour because numerous studies have linked structural brain differences with transsexualism. This plays out in a prolonged experience of gender dysphoria for the individual that cis people do not experience and can not comprehend. Is hardly reasonable to consider this experience 'not tangible'.
In my case, I would exclude any possibility of drug effects in the womb, as my country was very poor and most people probably could not afford to purchase those pills when I was born.
I wished to be a woman when I was 4 years old, trying to wear women's clothes. I am sure I am not an intersex.
During my puberty, my body and face became feminized in the modern standard (slim legs/waist, relatively big pelvis, laughing like a woman, slender body figure, frequent crying, and etc), inciting all kinds of comment from a little girl to old men/women that I look like a girl. However, I was biologically male (XY) anyway. After my 20s, I could live as a typical male, a successful one.
It was my later 30s that I realized my transsexualism clearly. Looking at the mirror, I thought I will look better with women's clothes. While exercising outdoors, I noticed that some men watch my legs in summer. I shaved my legs and started to grow my hair. It went on and on, despite several pauses. I have never been on HRT, although I once unsuccessfully tried it. Nowadays I wear skirt, fishnet and heels in my work place. Most people seem to accept it, not owing to my pass-ability or beauty at all, but to my outstanding performance as a dad, a husband and a colleague.
I am a kind of Narcissist. I see a woman in the mirror when I am naked. My transsexualism in my brain seems to interact with my physical appearance (both body and face) through my eyes. It becomes stronger when I wear some makeup.
I guess there are a few transgender people like me. Both of my mind and physical body are feminine to some extent.
I believe the womb hypothesis, as my brother, my close male relatives, or my sons have never shown any symptom of transsexualism. The body figure of my brother is not so much feminine. The standard of femininity is certainly socially-constructive at some extent, but I guess there are some universal or ubiquitous commonness.
barbie~~
Oh. One thing was forgotten. My unique difference from my male relatives was that I was malnutritioned when I was 0 to 1 years old. My mother did not produce enough milk. They tried powdered milk unsuccessfully. And they tried some oriental medicine, causing me to suffer from diarrhea for 6 months thereafter. I became extremely lean and I guess this explains why my body and facial figure is so much feminine in the modern standard (underweight and a thin waist is what women wanted now all around the world). Fortunately, I am now very healthy compared to my contemporary, partially owing to my early malnutrition. Some studies also show that eating less is better for health and longevity. Most women envy me for my slim legs and waist. I guess the condition during infancy is also critical in causing transsexualism.
barbie~~
Quote from: Dread_Faery on November 15, 2014, 08:09:23 PM
I actually kind of agree with you, I believe there is a structural element involved in the construction of ones gender identity, I just vehemently believe it has no effect on behaviour, because neurosexism really sucks. And I also believe that constructed gender roles and norms of gendered behaviour can and do have a profound effect on an individuals gender identity, mainly due to the synaptic rewriting of neuroplasticity.
I talk about this subconscious sense of self a lot and it is important, especially if it clashes with the physical reality of someone's body. This isn't something that is taught or learnt, I believe it to be innate and probably structural in nature, i.e. having a brain wired to expect testosterone but instead having an endocrine system flooded with estrogen. It would cause an innate physical wrongness with your body, which is what I believe dysphoria to be, a mis-match between what the brain expects the body to be and how it actually is. But it's not the totality of gender identity, merely a part of it. This is what I mean why I say that we construct our gender identity from a variety if cues, both learned and innate, conscious and subconscious. Kind of similar to the way we construct our full identity.
Mostly this is speculation on my part, I've thrown the idea at a few friends and it fits with their experiences as well as mine, it's most likely flawed, but at this moment in time it works for my understanding of being trans because it neatly torpedoes what I see as flawed, biologically essentialist explanations of being trans.
Yes, that is essentially what modern neurobiological research is saying. There are underlying biological structures that provide what you called "cues" and then there are external "nurture" factors that are socially defined by each culture that layer on top of these cues. And our dysphoria comes from the internal cues being completely at odds with the external social definitions that are often thrown at us because of a cursory examination of our genitals when we are born.
Quote from: LizMarie on November 16, 2014, 02:23:57 PM
And our dysphoria comes from the internal cues being completely at odds with the external social definitions that are often thrown at us because of a cursory examination of our genitals when we are born.
Maybe yours is, but mine is from the internal cues of what my body is supposed to look like being completely at odds with the external reality of what my body does look like. For me, it's mostly physical, not social.
Again, not meaning to argue. Just pointing out that dysphoria is different for different people.
My understanding is that it's not gender identity that might develop in the womb but that your brain might diverge there. One theory is that there are several "dumps" of hormones early on. The first one develops physical traits but there is a later one that develops the brain.
For instance, like this: http://www.majickalproductions.biz/bekasite/resouces/In-Womb%20Development.htm
--Jay
Quote from: aleon515 on November 17, 2014, 02:06:09 PM
My understanding is that it's not gender identity that might develop in the womb but that your brain might diverge there. One theory is that there are several "dumps" of hormones early on. The first one develops physical traits but there is a later one that develops the brain.
For instance, like this: http://www.majickalproductions.biz/bekasite/resouces/In-Womb%20Development.htm
--Jay
The page you've linked to is mostly right, however it's a lot simpler than they make out. By default, your prenatal development occurs as female, whereas if there's androgenic hormones present, it occurs as male.
In rodents, testosterone is converted into estradiol and it's the estradiol acting on estrogen receptors in the brain that drives brain masculinization, however that's not what occurs in people (or other primates it seems). In humans, all male development seems to be driven solely through the action of androgenic hormones on androgen receptors. This is shown by the fact that CAIS women seem to invariably be psychologically female as well as female in appearance, and also in the research on Rhesus monkeys. There, testosterone and DHT were equally effective at driving male brain development in the genetically female monkeys they were experimenting on, even though DHT doesn't aromatise and so doesn't cause any estradiol to be produced.
The critical period for male genital development starts about 7 weeks after conception and has finished by the end of week 12. A female fetus exposed to androgenic hormones during that time is likely to end up with intersexed or male genitals; a male fetus whose testosterone production isn't up to par during that critical period is likely to end up with intersexed or female genitals. If your hormones are normal during that critical period but then get messed up at some later stage of the pregnancy, there won't be much effect on your genitals or reproductive organs (genetic females could end up with an enlarged clitoris; genetic males, a penis shorter than it otherwise would have been and undescended testicles, or abnormalities associated with testicular descent, such as inguinal hernias). Basically your genitals and physical appearance will be that of your genetic sex though.
However, there's a critical period for sexually dimorphic brain development too, which, in Rhesus monkeys, is the entire second half of the pregnancy. What limited evidence there is seems to point to the same thing applying to humans (although in our case, normally developed male babies continue to produce testosterone for several months after birth, which suggests that some of our sexually dimorphic brain development might take place after birth too).
Even if some things associated with having a male brain develop after birth, whatever it is that drives gender identity later in life seems to already be in place by the time you're born, since in the David Reimer case and in the male cloacal exstropy patients who were reassigned to female, they were castrated shortly after birth as part of the reassignment surgery, but nonetheless retained a male gender identity.
So, we know that both your physical sex and your "brain sex" depend on what hormones were present during your prenatal development, not on whether you have a Y chromosome or not. The details of what goes on (particularly as far as brain development is concerned) aren't at all well understood though.
Quote from: Edge on November 17, 2014, 08:35:41 AM
Maybe yours is, but mine is from the internal cues of what my body is supposed to look like being completely at odds with the external reality of what my body does look like. For me, it's mostly physical, not social.
Again, not meaning to argue. Just pointing out that dysphoria is different for different people.
Understood! :) And I wasn't clear as to my meaning. For me, my brain has screamed "female" all my life and my body went another direction. Because of my body going that direction, everyone treated me as male when internally I was not. And I too had severe body dysphoria, to the point of nearly mutilating my genitals as a teenager. The only reason the body dysphoria is under control now is that intellectually I know that I need that material for GCS later, and that I am actively moving towards GCS eventually, even if it is slower than I would prefer.
But also, as you note, how these factors manifest from person to person varies greatly.
Zinnia Jones, a well known trans blogger and activist, even wrote about how gender dysphoria can manifest in non-obvious ways.
"That was dysphoria?" 8 signs and symptoms of indirect gender dysphoria (http://freethoughtblogs.com/zinniajones/2013/09/that-was-dysphoria-8-signs-and-symptoms-of-indirect-gender-dysphoria/)