Sexual Dimorphism In The Human Brain
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=2330248&highlight=sexual#post2330248
I know I’ve posted an analysis of this study as well.
Kelly: I understand the point that a diagnosis of “Gender Identity Disorder” requires there to be no underlying physical cause for the feelings of being in the 'wrong" body. I also understand your belief (supported, but not proven, by "neuroanatomy) that there is, in fact, such an underlying physical cause.
And yet, Gender Identity Disorder is currently considered a mental disorder, is it not? Especially since the underlying physical cause cannot currently be demonstrated conclusively? You may very well be right that there is an underlying physical cause, but for now I think I’m still justified in referring to it as a mental disorder.
Also, even if there is an underlying physical cause for Gender Dysphoria, why would this lead you think that you have the “wrong” set of genitals and chromosomes? Isn’t it more likely that the problem with your neuroanatomy is the birth defect instead (i.e., that you were born with the “wrong” neuroanatomy)?
Again, this is not a condemnation, and as I said before I think people with Gender Dysphoria should be encouraged to take whatever steps they deem appropriate to live happier lives (including wearing clothing associated with the opposite sex, adopting mannerisms of the opposite sex, taking hormones, and/or having surgery). But I still have a problem with somebody calling a penis a “birth defect,” sorry. You believe that someday science will conclusively prove that gender identity is rooted in the structure of the brain. And you may very well be right. But I think it is also a possibility that the whole concept of “gender identity” existing apart from anatomy is largely a myth and that science will someday invent a drug to treat Gender Dysphoria.
Finally, I’m sure that there are many people who still treat mental disorders as somehow less worthy of understanding and sympathy than birth defects. I am not one of them, however. I do not ascribe to the theory that mental disorders are the fault of the person who has them or that they simply need to “get over” them. I believe that most mental illnesses are, in fact, rooted in physical causes that are beyond the person’s ability to control, and I look forward to the day when they can all be treated sucessfully.
AHunter: Try 37 years (and counting). As I mentioned, I do not have many of the stereotypically male traits and often find myself very uncomfortable trying to act and feel the way society says that men should act and feel. And I frequently wish I could get away with acting more “girlish.” And yet, none of this makes me feel any less like a man since, as I said before, I am built like a man and only want to have sex with women. If I were suddenly whisked away to a parallel universe where I was treated like a woman and allowed to act like a woman, I suspect I would be very happy as long as I was still able to actually have sex with women. Which is to say that I don’t always like being a man, and I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be a woman, but as long as I have a penis and an attraction to women I have no doubt that I am, in fact, a man.
Regards,
Barry
Take that back. I am not a “member of the transgendered community”. Those people are weird.
I really dislike how people think there is a unified “transgendered community” or a unified “homosexual community”. There isn’t. I’m a transsexual lesbian, yes, but the closest thing to a community that I’m a member of is Northwest Chicago Suburbs for Dean.
godzillatemple, thirty years ago homosexuality was a mental illness, too. Nothing about being homosexual has changed, just the way we perceive it. I consider the current perception to be incorrect, and I believe that it will be proven incorrect in the future as more research is completed and our understanding of the underlying basis of gender is made more perfect.
You still don’t get it: if it’s rooted in a physical cause, it’s not a mental illness.
My genitalia (and other secondary sex characteristics) are a birth defect because they don’t match up with how my brain is wired. You can argue that my brain is the birth defect if you like, but as it is far more difficult to correct the brain than it is to correct the rest of the body, fixing the body seems to be more appropriate. It’s not as though I’m denying someone else the use of my penis by having it turned inside and tucked inside.
I already take a drug that cures my gender dysphoria. It’s called Premarin.
Taken back. Properly phrased, I should have said “you’re a transgendered individual.” My bad.
Check out this cite about the berdache for information on how (some of) those societies delt with it. From the cite
To the anthropologist, male/female is based on biology while woman/man is based on how the tribe percieves them.
Since of good deal of cultures accepted transgendered people and had roles for them I don’t think it is a matter of changing society to fit a small group of people, it is a matter of recognizing something that exists and has been recognized before.
Another interesting read on the anthropolical aspect of transgendered people.
A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality
From that cite:
Kelly: I realize this is not by any means a definitive cite, but I’m running late and I only had time for a quick Google search. From this site:
Barry
Again: what do you mean by saying that in other cultures, individuals are perceived as being “men or women”.
If we’re not talking about sexual preferences, and we’re not talking about sexual characteristics, and we’re not talking about gender-associated behaviors and preferences, what are we talking about?
Don’t any of you actually know?!
godzillatemple
Then you aren’t that different from me, except insofar as for a rather intense 3-year period between when I was 18ish and 20ish this aspect of what it means to be me took on really central significance and shed meaningful light on a HUGE stack of frightening unanswered questions and fears about myself as an inadequate person, and it still constitutes a rather powerful and personal theme within “who I am”, …and for you, maybe not?
Either way, if the space aliens touch down on my apartment rooftop I’ll see if I can get us both tickets 
On reading what I just posted, it sound inadequate. Let me try to explain.
After a couple years of reading about Renee Richards the tennis player and other crossover people and feeling a certain affinity but not quite an identification, it came to a head like an infection, got to be a very sore point and finally exploded. I had become sufficiently sure that I was not like other boys who had boy-parts and were attracted to girls that I was even open to the possibility that I was gay and “just didn’t know it yet” or something like that. For you (godzillatemple), the combo of “got boy parts, find females attractive” was and is sufficient to tell you “Yep, I’m one of them men folks”. For me, more emphatic things said I was not like them and that it was an important and personal difference. When a bit of mutually well-intentioned experimentation led me to want to rip my skin off and dip my head in Clorox and scream that there just wasn’t any way in hell I was gay, I was totally confused: “Then what the hell am I?”
Despite being attracted to females I was just as alienated from any viable identity as “I’m a man” as I was from “I"m a gay man” (interesting, notice the formulation there). “OK”, I said to myself, “so rather than being an exception to the rule, I have the dubious privilege of being an exception to the exception to the rule. What’s the next stop on this line, bus driver?”
And the next stop was the Wrong Body thing. And after awhile I said “So, umm, rather than being an exception to the exception to the rule, assuming it’s necessarily always this damn linear and all that, I seem to be the exception to the exception to the exception to the rule. Next stop?”
And there weren’t none. Bus driver let me off in the middle of nowhere on some block with no streetlights and no buildings, just lots of barbed wire.
While you find gender identity in having male parts and having an attaction pattern that fits you in with a large contingent of people with the same parts, I have gender identity only by conceptualizing that planet of which we spoke, plus hypothesizing that there must be others like me out there somewhere, and maybe/perhaps/hopefully analogous female people who are specifically and (even as a central part of their sexual and gender identity) emphatically attracted to people who are male and who are sexually responsive to women and yet who are not “men” but are instead cross-identified with the women.
If anyone out there is interesting, I’d like to make a recommendation.
Starlight 2. It’s an anthology of short stories; specifically, I recommend “CONGENITAL AGENESIS OF GENDER IDEATION” by Raphael Carter.
It’s become clear to me that the concepts of “men” and “women” you’re all throwing around don’t have any content whatsoever. All that matters to you is the existence of the categories themselves – they’re empty boxes.
How long will it take you to realize there’s an infinite number of boxes?
You’re describing two things: anotomical differences, and societal expectations, neither of which are germane to this debate. The OP is asking about what it “feels” like to be a man or a woman, apart from the physical or societal aspects.
Absolutely untrue. I’m a man, and some of the best sex I’ve ever had was with the woman on top, where she was doing the thrusting. It didn’t feel odd at all; in fact it felt pretty damn great. Honestly, I think people make too much of the fact that one’s an “innie” and one’s an “outie”. Of course I can imagine what it might be like to have a vagina, and I imagine it would be quite enjoyable. I happen to have a penis, and that’s great, too.
Nah, your attitude sounds provincial to me. I think human sexuality is much more complex than “the man sticks it in the woman”. I mean, missionary style is fun, but there are other ways to get off.
blowero is absolutely right. No one here has actually said anything about what being a “man” or a “woman” is like, aside from physiology and societal constructs.
Well?
Actually, TVAA, people have. You just refuse to listen.
“Patient, please tell me about yourself”
“Well, I have a wife and two kids, and sometimes we…”
“Now you’re telling me about other people, I want to hear about you.”
“Well, I think I’m the kind of person who likes to hang out with people at bars and parties, but quietly, you know, and it seems like …”
“Now you’re still describing how you are with other people, I want to hear about you.”
“…Uh…well, I’ve got a kind of crooked nose, I think I’m a bit self-conscious about…”
“Now you’re describing your body. I don’t want to hear about your body, I want to hear about you.”
“?!”
Of course people are describing societal expectations and the body itself. Whatever gender is, it isn’t experienced in a vacuum and certainly can’t be described in one.
No, we’ve been given several mutually exclusive interpretations and a few evasions.
The only thing we’ve established is that all of you have different ideas about what is meant by “gender identity”.
AHunter3, we’ve also had claims that gender identity isn’t related to societal expectations or genital physiology.
Are these claims valid, or invalid?
OK, I’m back with a better cite for KellyM. From here and here (this one is a PDF), it seems clear that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (4th Edition) does include in the definition of “mental illness” those disorders that have a strictly biological basis:
I readily admit that I am not an expert on mental illnesses and may be guilty of using some terminology inexactly or even incorrectly. I can say, however, that my mother has a degree in biopsychology and, for whatever its worth, tells me that many disorders that are classified as “mental illnesses” do, in fact, have underlying physical causes. The fact that the disorder is caused by something biological doesn’t mean it isn’t a mental illness, in other words.
Now, feel free to disagree with the DSM and my mother (I’m sure they’ve both been wrong in the past and will be wrong in the future). But please realize that I wasn’t just talking out of my ass when I referred to Gender Dysphoria/Gender Identity Disorder as a form of mental illness. It wasn’t meant in any way to be a slur, and I’m sorry if you are offended by the term. But I still think that the “birth defect” (if any) is the fact that you somehow “feel like” your body is the wrong sex and not that your body actually is the wrong sex.
Barry
There are societies where gender roles aren’t tied to physiology. For example, I recall reading about one African society where there were tightly stereotyped masculine and feminine gender roles, but men and women could take on either role.
So: are you suggesting that people are somehow born with the expectation of a specific physiology, and that if their body doesn’t match this expectation, they have gender identity problems? Are you suggesting that gender roles have nothing to do with gender identity? Just what are you suggesting?
KellyM, I preface this by reiterating that I’m all about treating people as the gender they genuinely believe they are. I don’t take that standpoint out of any particular beleif about the nature of gender; rather, I take it out of a belief in respecting folks’ self-identification in most cases.
That said, I want to ask a favor. You say that it’s already been explained in this thread just what it means to feel like a man or a woman, but as a reader, I’m very unclear on that. If you would be willing to summarize that – even by quoting your previous posts – I’d be grateful.
Daniel