Okay, I stumbled upon something, and if its true.... we are more woman than all the cisgender women (feels like it at times too)

Its called "stria terminalis"  http://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/02/us/study-links-brain-to-transsexuality.html 

Old article but not common knowledge...

I was glad to read it.... explains why I am not a loud mouth agressive woman .

So that's why I like to be dolled up and dressed to the nines more than any natural female I see no matter the occasion. Very interesting.

A ten year old study and, as you might expect, followup studies have addressed some of the issues with this one. I think the studies may be addressed in the Wiki.

One thing they talk about in the book "Brain Sex" is hyperfemininity. Ordinarily, the ovaries in a female fetus produce a small amount of androgenic hormones, which means that the brains of most cis women have undergone a small amount of male imprinting. However, when gonadal dysgenesis occurs (i.e. the ovaries or testicles fail to form altogether), those traces of androgenic hormones aren't produced. As adults, cis women who've had this happen to them tend to have exaggeratedly feminine behaviour.

As an example of what tends to happen, the authors of Brain Sex talk about a woman with Turners Syndrome (one of the conditions that causes gonadal dysgenesis):

QuoteCaroline suffers from Turner's syndrome. Like most girls with her condition her behaviour as a child was exaggeratedly feminine. She played with dolls to the exclusion of virtually everything else. As a teenager she loved to imitate her mother and do household chores. She was always the first to volunteer as a baby-sitter. As Caroline grew up she became obsessive about pretty clothes, make-up and personal appearance. She was ultra-romantic, yearning to be married, and dreaming constantly of having babies - something, alas, which she could never do. Intellectually, she scored the average for her sex on verbal IQ tests, but in mathematics and tests for spatial ability she fell far below the level of normal girls. Her sense of direction was very poor.

Although I don't meet most of those criteria, one of the things that makes me think that there must have been a time during my prenatal development when my testosterone production was totally suppressed, is the fact that I have a terrible sense of direction. If I don't have roadsigns, maps or a satnav to help me find my way, I get lost very easily (my partner, who is cis female, has a far better sense of direction than I do). Most people seem to have an innate ability to keep a rough sense of the direction they're headed in, but it's something which I completely lack.

Well, OK, I confess, I also care about my appearance, and there's a part of me that goes all gooey inside every time I see a baby too!

One of the properties of DES is that, in prostate cancer treatment, a dose of just 3mg per day will suppress testosterone production so completely that, as far as hormones are concerned, it's considered to have medically identical effects to surgical removal of the testicles. The doses being used for miscarriage treatment were far higher than that (under the standard dosing schedule, 20x to 40x higher during the critical period for brain development). If it does the same thing to an unborn baby as it does to adult men, then those of us who were exposed to DES may indeed be more feminine than most cis women.

Interesting but it makes me wonder when they will develop a test to detect these differences and if that will enhance or inhibit ones chance of transitioning.

eh. Studies. You'll probably find one "proving" the exact opposite. Women are women. Cis or trans. Straight or lesbian. Butch or ultra feminine. No one woman is more female than the other.

Quote from: Sabrina on May 18, 2015, 09:03:06 AM
So that's why I like to be dolled up and dressed to the nines more than any natural female I see no matter the occasion. Very interesting.

Also helps explain that, despite feeling very much a woman ( I am pre-HRT) , I have very little attraction to males...or perhaps it just means that I am a lesbian?

Quote from: Ms Grace on May 18, 2015, 05:34:14 PM
eh. Studies. You'll probably find one "proving" the exact opposite. Women are women. Cis or trans. Straight or lesbian. Butch or ultra feminine. No one woman is more female than the other.

Quote from: Ms Grace on May 18, 2015, 05:34:14 PM
eh. Studies. You'll probably find one "proving" the exact opposite. Women are women. Cis or trans. Straight or lesbian. Butch or ultra feminine. No one woman is more female than the other.

True. This is an old study.. tip of the iceberg.

But it makes me more confident that I am more woman than most of the women in a room... it makes me think (humorously).... a guy is more gay (intellectually) dating a woman. Its not made up mumbo jumbo.... my brain is more female.

It explains why female characteristics are my strength while I suck at being a man....

I dont know.

Its like closure. If this is what it is.... Im not a freak (or demonic... or sexual fetish).  Its a disability like being born with a disease or condition.

Transgender then is not something to be ashamed of...

Closure.

Quote from: Emily E on May 18, 2015, 05:26:43 PM
Interesting but it makes me wonder when they will develop a test to detect these differences and if that will enhance or inhibit ones chance of transitioning.

It will help... (in general for social approval). Once its a medical thing... science will back it up.

Quote from: Wild Flower on May 18, 2015, 06:34:32 PM
Transgender... is not something to be ashamed of...

I don't need a "study" to tell me that.

for one thing 20 years in the sciences in modern research is quite a long time. In 20 years there should be an awful extensive amount of  follow up data. another thing is when you start saying someone is more than someone else you got a brand new entanglement of problems, one race is more human than another race situation comes to mind.

Quote from: Ms Grace on May 18, 2015, 05:34:14 PM
eh. Studies. You'll probably find one "proving" the exact opposite.

But this should not surprise.
If its stuff concerning commercial products often something is presented which is simply off.
Intuition and looking up old knowledge might help.
If soy for example was traditionally always fermented and is now unfermented it might be advisable to look into it.

Quote
Women are women. Cis or trans. Straight or lesbian. Butch or ultra feminine. No one woman is more female than the other.

Gender identity and sexual preference are two things...
for a biological reason of gender identity there have been findings:
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,186458.msg1664590.html#msg1664590

Trans people have been around in all cultures so it has to be biological.
And why not in different degrees ?
Additionally trans people might not take it for granted and thus put a different value on it.

For sexual preference there are also biological explanations.

Quote from: Laura_7 on May 18, 2015, 07:56:40 PM
Gender identity and sexual preference are two things...

I'm not disputing that - but it hasn't stopped plenty of ignoramuses down the ages from saying that lesbians aren't "real" women.

I think its probably very true...at least for me! and always has been...

My ex used to tell old-me, 'God, youre such a girl!' - but she didn't mean it in a nice way! :~D

Quote from: stephaniec on May 18, 2015, 07:35:44 PM
for one thing 20 years in the sciences in modern research is quite a long time. In 20 years there should be an awful extensive amount of  follow up data. another thing is when you start saying someone is more than someone else you got a brand new entanglement of problems, one race is more human than another race situation comes to mind.

Only through a revolution can the world change...

Blacks/Jews/Hebrews/Irish/Italians     were once consider less human....only through brutality can you conquer.


I am not one to be revolutionizing....

But what is our fight in 2015? To save the youth of testerone poisoning and suicide....SUICIDE is our war.... 

Hierarchies of 'femaleness' or presumptions of gender based on biological sex at birth is exactly the opposite of what we are fighting for though surely?

this topic just seems so nana nana boo boo-ish to me....

1. Old article, and the numbers are very bad. A few years later, in the late 1990s, Lynn Conway did something exceedingly simple - she asked the SRS surgeons in the US how many patients they had processed over the prior 20 years. The numbers indicated something over 33,000 SRS patients had already been processed and were likely still alive. That's three times the number in that article, but back then they assumed the incidence of being trans was far too low.

2. The numbers Lynn Conway researched did not include any US citizens who had gone overseas, something that we know may be as much as half of all US trans women or more.

3. Here's an actual slide of the BSTc (bed nucleus of the stria terminalis). Note the four categories included. I know some macho heterosexual men who were openly offended at the notion that somehow, in any way at all, gay males might be "more male" than them, yet this slide says exactly that. And it says trans women have BSTcs like cisgender women.



4. Some of you are arguing there should be additional data about brain differences? There is! Here's a partial list that I maintain. If you become aware of other such studies, please let me know and I'll add them to the list!

One Stop Trans Brain Research List

5. As for studies "proving the opposite" about the biological basis for us being trans, that's not happening. They don't exist. The studies are piling up on one side of the aisle, showing a medical, neurobiological basis for being trans, and that the reason trans women are trans is because we have important brain structures that are female in structure, not male. No other competing theory currently has any laboratory backed data supporting it. None.

This is why the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, and now the American College of Physicians all recognize being trans as a medical condition, that the condition has a neurobiological basis, and that for those suffering from extreme GID, transitioning is the one agreed upon treatment method that consistently works to a very high degree.