Gender Identification

Great Debates
1

I wanted to post this in general questions, but because of the nature of the question, I have a feeling that eventually, this thread might be moved here.

Before asking, I just want to state, right off the bat, that I am looking for factual answers, and am not using this thread to make personal judgments or to mock, ridicule, or put down others. Not that reading the question should lead anybody to that conclusion, but from past experience, I wouldn’t be surprised of anybody accusing me of having a “hidden agenda” of some sort. I don’t. All that said, here’s the question.

What is the scientific and/or medical backing for people of one gender, who claim that they’re another? I ask this because, when someone says that they’re clearly something that they don’t appear to be, or that we know that they’re not, like the over used cliche of somebody claiming to be Napoleon, we consider them crazy, and don’t take them seriously. This is because they have nothing in fact to back them up. But when somebody with no breasts and penis claims to be a woman, a lot of people take them seriously. Which is the reason for my asking if there’s any medical and/or scientific support to back them up. (Note, I’m not using this thread to say that they need to or should back up their claim. That would be for another thread)

Now there are instances, that have been well documented, of someone being born a hermaphrodite, being assigned the wrong gender, and later on in life, having to correct that. Also, there’s something else somebody suggested, which sounds logical, but I don’t know if it’s been documented or not. Men and women’s brains are somewhat different, so it’s possible for someone to be born with a man’s body and a woman’s brain, or vice versa. Have transgendered people had tests which shows this to be the case in some or many of them? And finally, the only other scientific/medical basis I can think of would be if there are areas of the brain that are more active in one gender than the other and someone of one gender, is using the areas of the brain more commonly used by the other gender (I hope you understood that). Has that been documented?

Anyway, again, I feel the need to defend myself and say that I’m not asking these questions so that I can turn around and use the answers against anybody, nor is the question itself an attempt to be an argument against such things as cross dressing or sex change operations, and so on. I’m hoping that this thread will stick to things like the facts that are known, and theories that, at the moment at least, seem credible to the medical and scientific communities.

2

“no breasts and penis” should read “no breasts and a penis” of course.

3

Obviously, I’m taking the “theories that are credible” option, as I have no knowledge whatsoever about the physiology involved. I think perhaps we all have an awareness of our inner selves; how we feel at any given time. Thus we are able to identify our feelings when, say, we are happy or sad. We know what makes us feel good, emotionally, you know?

And I think that we identify certain feelings as being male or female in nature. Thus, someone born in a male body may have feelings (physical as well as emotional) he cannot identify as being “male”. He may regard his penis and think, that doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t jibe with my own self-image. He may realize that boys seem to act in a certain way, and that he doesn’t act that way. Or he may see that boys DON’T act in a certain way, but girls seem to.

Personally (and this is where I veer way off anything remotely resembling “evidence” and into conjecture) I think we are all kind of gender unspecific in some areas, we have just learned to identify some characteristics as being particularly feminine or masculine, and we categorize accordingly. This has little to do with the sex of our bodies, because gender and sex aren’t the same thing. At least I don’t think they are.

And with that input, you probably know less than when you started, huh?

4

Here is a page of links to the official websites of various disorders (Turner’s Syndrome, Klinefelter’s Syndrome, etc.) that affect the sexual physiology and sometimes require gender reassignment. (Always remember that the word gender and the word sexual usually have very different meanings when reading about gender and sexual identity.)

5

It’s the brain. There are differences between a male and female brain. Transexuals (not to be confused with intersexed individuals) are indeed people with a brain of one sex and the genes and morphogy of another.

For details, see here. Note that the article is reprinted from Nature. There are some objections to the study. I’ll try to find the article refuting these objections.

6

Well, it can be easily stated that there is ample historical evidence across every culture that this is a natural phenomenon.

As far as the brains acting differently, actually, yes, there is documented evidence of certain parts of the lower brain being larger/more developed/electromagnetically more active in women than men (forgive me for forgetting the exact name, I studied this some years ago), and this has also been the case with gender reversal. There is various research into the hardwiring of the brain, in the linked article about the “brain sex” being decided before “physical sex.”

Some psychologists treat is as dellusional psychosis, using anti-psychotics and such, usually without effect.

On the other hand, there is some evidence correlating transgendered behavior with certain types of upbringing, frequently on the mother’s part.

The truth is that it is probably a mixture of causes. Some physiological, some behaviorial. The fact is that men and women have brains that are wired differently, as observed in response to brain trauma. It is not a stretch to accept the fact that a “miswired” brain could happen every so often.

7

This link may help too:

It’s still about this sex-reversed area of the hypothalamus found in the brains of the transsexual people studied.

8

Testes and ovaries. No question about it.

Because they affect so many other parts of the body. YOu just cant negate the effects of all those male and female hormones affecting so many organs, tissues, and body systems.

If you dont have either, then I will treat you as whatever sex you want to be considered as.

9

No question in your mind, maybe. Obviously, since a half dozen people before you posted extended links regarding gender reveral being hardwired in the brain, there is some question about it.

In other news, if I get castrated, I am a woman? Well, that certainly makes the matter much more cut and dry, thanks. I didn’t realize that was all there was to it. O_o

10

:slight_smile: No, I understand what you’re saying. And it is true that, to some extent, some of the things we think about being masculine or feminine are societal constructs, but there are also things that are genetically predominantly male and female. And yes, there are those who don’t “Feel” the gender that they were born, but then there are those who feel that everybody is out to get them, or who “know” that they were actually born on another planet. And my point in saying all this, isn’t to call transvestites and transgendered people wackos or loonies, but just that simply because you feel something very strongly, doesn’t make it so. But since many in our society, and the society of others, take these people seriously, I’m just curious about the medical/scientific proof of such claims. But, on the other hand, I don’t want to be mistaken for saying that I think that such proof should be required. For example, I’m a Christian, I strongly believe in God, but yet, there’s no definite scientific evidence I could give to an atheist and go, here’s the proof, and I’m not requiring that of transgendered people either. I only ask out of curiosity.

11

First, thank you for the link, I’ll check it out.

Second, true, gender is what you physicaly are, and sexual identity is what gender you identify as, and I don’t think anyone will have a problem with mixing up the two.

12

What is an intersexed individual?

13

More typically, at least among the genderqueer, transsexual, and other folks I know, ‘sex’ is the physical descriptor, ‘gender’ is the way that manifests socially. They aren’t always as strongly linked as they are in the West; some cultures pretty readily let people adopt the gender of their choice, and some have more than two.

14

Yeah, I was wondering if it was something along those lines. Thanks.

15

Excellent point. Yeah, there are such terms as gender bending, and so on. Gee, this can get a little confusing sometimes.

Just two questions. 1)Which cultures and 2) More than two?

16

A fair number of cultures that have specifically gendered initiation-into-adulthood ceremonies let people go through the initiation for the other sex; once they’ve done so, they are treated as an adult of the gender of their initiation type. (I know this is the case in some Caribbean groups, and I would expect it true of their parental cultures as well.) Some, I believe African, groups let people (usually women) have essentially distinct lives in a different gender role.

The little I know about cultures with a third gender is Native American, and that’s about the limit of what I know. I believe that many such folks are often tapped for shamanic or otherwise liminal roles within their communities.

I’ll give someone I know who knows a lot more about this sort of thing a nudge. I suspect that this will result in the thread being cheerfully buried in cites.

17

Master Control

The term intersexed covers a variety of conditions- Klinefelter’s syndrome (XXY), Turner’s syndrome (XO), androgen insensitivity syndrome, numerous conditions resulting in ambiguous genitalia, and others.

Intersex Society Of North America FAQ

18

Actually, one of the more interesting parts about shamanic cultures is that you frequently find the shamans being reverse gender - from Native Americans to Central Asians to Africans, stretching back thousands of years. The shamans are often men who behave as women, to the point of dressing in female attire. However, such people are put in a rather respected and important religious position. Some of the explanations are that they have part of a god or spirit in them, or otherwise are unwordly. Other cultures simply accept it - in many Native American tribes, men performed the tasks of women, even taking their dress, and stood socially as women. This was entirely normal and accepted behavior. (Of course, the Native Americans were/are by no means homogenuous, and many tribes looked down on it as strictly as most Western cultures). I know I’ve read about some pagan beliefs where the effeminate man is the spirit of a woman in the body of a man, which was looked on as a very special thing (the nurturing nature of femininity combined with the fertile nature of masculinity). Of course, there is the reverse of this that is often overlooked - the spirit of a man in a woman. In most ancient cultures that allowed this, this is where the female warrior class comes from. In general (historically), it is more acceptable for a woman to want to be a man because, until recently, there wasn’t much they could do about it other than acting aggressive. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is not as much historical data about women-men having the religious symbolism as the reverse. I suppose it just isn’t as obvious a change, being generally less sexual in nature (not to imply that transgendered means homosexual, that often isn’t the case, though it can get confusing at times).

So, in summary, in some shamanistic and pagan cultures, transgenderism has a mystical quality - in essence, taking what was not “normal” and worshipping it, instead of repressing it. It is interesting to note that, in probably most modern cultures, someone with six fingers or transgenderism is looked down upon, as if something were wrong with them, while in many historic cultures, they would be looked upon as touched by the gods.

19

I think an important distinction to make here is that transgendered person isn’t claiming to have a body different than the one they actually have, just that their self-image doesn’t match that body. That is, the body they want to have/should have is not the same as the one they’ve actually got. I see that as the big difference between a delusional Napoleon and the transgendered. Now, anyone seriously making a claim like “I have a penis, but it’s invisible!” must be some kind of loon. It’s not so easy to dismiss “I don’t have a penis, but I’d like to have one – and all the other typical male physical traits – because somehow I’ve always felt it was…wrong…that I wasn’t born with a male body.”

I don’t want to trivialize transgender issues here by making them sound merely cosmetic when they aren’t, but it’s certainly common enough for people to be unhappy with their bodies and seek to change them. We don’t consider people crazy for bleaching their hair or getting a nose job. I’ve even known people who said they changed their hair color because they didn’t feel their natural color matched their true personality! Having hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery is going to produce much bigger physical and social effects than just picking up a bottle of Clariol, but that indicates to me that the feelings behind the desire to change are that much stronger. If as a society we’re willing to allow people to alter their bodies for aesthetic reasons or as a means of self-expression, I don’t see how we can put the transgendered on the other side of the “crazy” line.

Now, the above doesn’t even take into consideration the sort of scientific evidence you were asking about – evidence that indicates that there is something in the brains or body chemistry of the transgendered that in a very real way makes their external sex a mis-match. One transgendered poster on these boards once mentioned that it wasn’t the surgery that was really important to her, it was the hormone treatments. She said that she physically felt better once she began taking female hormones, and believed that for whatever reason her body was set up to desire/expect hormones that it couldn’t produce on its own. That may seem strange to some people, but not to me. I have extensive and complicated endocrine problems myself, and I also have to get some of my hormones out of a bottle. My natural production of estrogen has thus far been normal, but it’s possible that in the future I might have to get that from a pill too. So I know what it’s like to have a body that doesn’t make all the chemicals it needs, and I know that sometimes the major symptom of such a problem is just a feeling inside that something is seriously wrong. I’m thus inclined to consider the transgendered to be people who happen to suffer from a rare kind of hormone imbalance rather than delusions or overactive imaginations.

20

The medical/scientific proof is in the collected case files of nearly 100 years of medical treatment of transsexual individuals. There are also some objective studies, both psychological and physiological, that support the collective findings of those doctors that counsel individuals with gender dysphoria.

Remember, medicine isn’t a science (even though it is informed by science). In medicine, the results are what matter, not the reasons. We treat transsexuals with hormones and reassignment because that is the treatment with the most reliably best results of all the approaches we’ve thought to try so far. We don’t do this because it forwards a preferred theory of gender construction, but simply because it works. Our understanding of why this approach works so much better than any other is still incomplete, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use it.