Being Transgender as a Fact of Nature
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/transsexualism-as-a-fact-of-nature/?_r=0
The New York Times/By JANE E. BRODY JUNE 13, 2016 5:45 AM
"In 1952, George Jorgensen, a Bronx-born G.I., underwent surgical and hormonal treatment in Denmark to become Christine Jorgensen, a nightclub entertainer and advocate for gender identity rights. Ever since, health professionals and lay people alike have debated the origins of gender identity, the wisdom of altering one's biologically determined sex, and whether society should accept the transgender community as a fact of nature."
Crappy article. At least I see one of our girls in the comments section trying to set things straight! 8)
Nature vs nurture?; the chicken or the egg?; I think therefore I am! Eventually [exponentially] ->-bleeped-<- will be accepted as a fact of life by almost everyone without question, but a scientifically proven explanation of the cause and effect would definitely speed up the process. When I first started my transition, I wanted a biological answer, so I had a karyotype test done to check for Klinefelter's, since I have a lot of characteristics, but the test showed I am not intersex, but I wasn't convinced (and I'm still not to some degree) that I didn't something else like androgen insensitivity, but the farther I got into my transition, I realized that it didn't really matter, because I am real, and my feelings and thoughts are real and valid, so I do not need some type of medical diagnosis to justify my experience; I am living proof of it.
I dropped a comment on this. It's awful. Surprised that the NYT would publish such tripe.
Saw your comment Suzi. My astronomy club has problems relating to some press people and some 'science' teachers on the basics of astronomy. They get it wrong. The ones commenting on DNA as a yardstick to determine gender in the brain are wrong. There are people who get the ailments or the ambiguous genitalia that have the gene markers known that they don't have. A lot has to do with the environment either in the uterus or outside of the uterus or both.
I have a Y chromosome with the haplogroup R1b1 means that I am in the Iberian-Celtic clan, with a full set of male parts doesn't mean that I am male in the head or fully Celtic. That X in the same pair 23 is from my mother who is German-Celtic. There are thousands of proven things that can happen to an embryo or fetus in the early set of development despite the genome built-in safeguards. Pregnant women given the drug Thalidomide were highly likely to have the child with stunted limbs and the virus Zika today causes microcephaly in the children born to women who contracted that virus while pregnant.
Joelene