What causes transsexuality? How do people know they are transsexual? These are two very different questions…and quite difficult to answer, but I am willing to take them on today.
We humans seem to want either a scientific or religious answer to everything. Especially when it comes to anything involving sex or gender-related behavior, if their is no known scientific cause, then there must be something morally wrong.
Why is that? Scientific curiosity I can understand. But it certainly should be disentangled from moral essentialism.
Do people really think that if there is no known scientific cause to a phenomenon, then it must be the work of…or evidence of…dark forces?
I am the one who loves changing from nothing to one |
I’ve got a few links for those who would like to do some studying before entering a discussion of the topics listed above the fold:
Causes of transsexualism: current findings and hypotheses
Come Explore With Us The Diverse Nature of Gender
Explanations of why we (i.e. people, in general) are the way we are have been sought for centuries. I am reminded of a discussion I had three days after I came out. The Chuck who is mentioned was the Chair of the Mathematics Department at the University of Central Arkansas at the time, Charles Seifert.
Who am I To stand and wonder, to wait While the wheels of fate Slowly grind my life away. Who am I ? |
October 2, 1992
I quote my source, which is me in this case. I was once told to document everything, and this is part of that effort.
Chuck told me that THEY had had a meeting…THEM consisting of him, my dean, the president of the university, the school attorney, and the head of personnel (it would have included the VP for academic affairs, but he was out of town). We immediate thought was: “Why didn’t WE have a meeting?” Chuck told me he was to be the conduit for any communication between me and THEM.
He voiced the “concerns” of those at the meeting:
“How does ‘he’ know?”
Gee, Chuck. How do you know who you are? That seems to be one of the central questions of philosophy for the past couple of millennia.
“If ‘he’ wears a dress to class, he’s out of here.” President
Oh, how wonderfully enlightened! Well, Chuck, I don’t currently have any dresses appropriate for the classroom and the weather, but I’ll let you know when I do.
“Wouldn’t immediate medical leave be in order?”
Well, Chuck, I don’t have any medical needs as of yet. I’m not even on hormones right now. I’ll let you know when I can use it. Besides, couldn’t that be interpreted as abandoning my classes and give THEM an excuse to terminate my tenure?
“Why couldn’t you just be gay?”
No answer…just a disbelieving stare.
There may be a reason that I am transsexual, a test of some sort. But if there were a test and I failed it, I would be no less transsexual. In the same way, if there really were a “gay gene” and some people didn’t have it, but still exhibited same-sex preference, would they be less gay?
I’m not a big believer in the importance of “Why?” when it comes to individual characteristics and identity. If someone chooses to be gay or transgender, I don’t think that is a moral failing. I don’t think there is anything “icky” about being gay or transgender.
Voicing that has got me in trouble with some of the essentialists in the past.
I don’t know why people are transgender or transsexual. Ultimately, nobody really knows. There is conjecture. But as is always the case, one should question the motives of those who make the conjectures. What do they have to gain by making them?
I wish I could break all the chains holding me |
Transsexual people have an internal disagreement with their bodies. We often say things like, “My body doesn’t fit me.” We may also have disagreements with the roles thrust on those who have bodies like the ones we were born having. Little girls are taught that they will grow up to be like their mommies. Little boys are taught that they will grow up to be like their fathers, if they have one.
That old drunk passed out on the couch? No, thank you.
Transpeople, unlike most people, do not accept the inevitability that little boys will grow up to be men and little girls must grow up to be women. This is what makes us different than you.
No, transfolk reject, often from a very early age…even before we know what chromosomes are, that chromosomes are destiny. In place of that, we learn that we have to hide how we feel in order to avoid becoming bully-fodder.
People who desperately need science to explain everything sometimes point to the 1997 study by Zhou, Hofman, Gooren and Swaab: A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality. (also here: Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus in The Journal for Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.)
Abstract: Transsexuals have the strong feeling, often from childhood onwards, of having been born the wrong sex. The possible psychogenic or biological aetiology of transsexuality has been the subject of debate for many years. Here we show that the volume of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminals (BSTc), a brain area that is essential for sexual behaviour, is larger in men than in women. A female-sized BSTc was found in male-to-female transsexuals [n=7]. The size of the BSTc was not influenced by sex hormones in adulthood and was independent of sexual orientation. Our study is the first to show a female brain structure in genetically male transsexuals and supports the hypothesis that gender identity develops as a result of an interaction between the developing brain and sex hormones.
The problem with this sort of determinant is that it requires the cutting open of the brain in order to measure the size of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. That sort of requires that the person operated on be dead.
Where the predisposition for transsexualism exists, psycho-social and other factors may subsequently play a role in the outcome, however, there is no evidence that nurturing and socialisation in contradiction to the phenotype can cause transsexualism, nor that nurture which is entirely consistent with the phenotype can prevent it (Diamond, 1996).
—LINK
All I can tell you is that I found some peace when I changed my hormone of choice. Testosterone was destroying me. I found more peace after I had surgery so that my body could stop fighting the hormone change.
Okay…so if we don’t know what really causes transsexuality, how do people know they are transsexual? That’s also not any easy question to answer.
In short, a person is transsexual if they have, or develop, a long-lasting identification as a member of the opposite sex.
Some people experience this from when they were very young. In others the condition approaches when they are older. But usually, 20-20 hindsight can discover clues from our distant memories.
For me personally, I can recall the time when I shoplifted a copy of an Esquire magazine (I think it was) and read the story of Christine Jorgensen over and over until the magazine fell apart. I feel guilty having done that because of the stealing, but having someone know about how I felt would have been humiliating. I already knew by then that Society™ disapproved.
But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads, they say I’ve changed. Something’s lost but something’s gained in living every day. |
Why don’t FTMs just be butch lesbians? Why don’t MTFs just be femmy gay men?
Trans people aren’t just frustrated homosexuals. Cisgender gay people would no more welcome sex reassignment than they would welcome a frontal lobotomy. They’re fine with their bodies, by and large, and just happen to be gay. Transpeople, regardless of their sexual orientation, are NOT fine with their bodies, or at least with the heaps and heaps of gender norms that are enforced upon them as a result of their bodies. Their gender identity (their internal sense of self) and/or gender expression (clothes, mannerisms, makeup or lack thereof, hairstyle, etc.) is significantly outside the norm, to a degree that doesn’t really fall within even the norm for feminine gay men or masculine gay women.
[Also] not all FTMs are terribly masculine and not all MTFs are terribly feminine. That’s another common misconception. Transpeople aren’t all striving to be nice, normal, heterosexual, pretend-you’re-not-Trans people with 2.3 children and a white picket fence. There are FTM drag queens and MTF butch lesbians, for the same reason that FTMs aren’t butch lesbians and MTFs aren’t femme gay men or drag queens – butch lesbians are women, and femme gay men and drag queens are men. It just goes to show all the more that gender really is infinite, and WAY more complicated than we have language for. But we’re doing our damnedest.
—LINK
I imagine that is much of the reason transfolk struggle for acceptance: anyone could theoretically claim to be trans. That seems to scare people.
It is true that anyone of us could be trans. If you fear that, you are not trans. What makes someone transsexual is that the prospect of changing sex is not at all unpleasant or fear-ridden. In fact, that’s what we desire…in the deepest, innermost places of truth inside us. It is not our fault that it doesn’t get painted on us in some way that is more easily identifiable.
Don’t get me wrong. There is a lot of fear involved with being transsexual. But that fear comes from the way we are treated in the human community. Next week I will try to document some of that.
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…of a new educational effort about transgender and transsexual people. I did another back a few years, called Gender Workshop. But new people are arriving here all the time, so I have been feeling that it was necessary to start over, especially with the possibility that our rights will be voted on soon.
If you are already singing in the choir, I hope you will remain patient. I hope to be back up to speed in the near future.
How do people know they are human?
Are those two the same questions as your first two questions?
I think they are, aren’t they?
People just are. Some total of why I think people are straight or gay or transgender. What we need to do is get rid of the hate and bigotry and then we need to help people be the best they can.
I just wanted to stop in…need to get away from blogs. Today is not a good day for different people.
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…available in Orange.
It’s a variant of the same thing. People who express moral value judgements evaluate homosexuality or gender variance as moral failing evaluate both as behavior.
Whether I have sex or don’t my whole life, I’m still gay. How do I know I’m gay if I’m not, in some holier-than-thou’s ideas of what it means to be gay? Because, when I have romantic thoughts and feelings and dreams, they are about people of the same sex. It’s just that simple.
It’s a very similar thing, for me, to people who have these simplistic ideas about concepts like evolution. If all evolution was about was fitter mommies and daddies leading to fitter children, and those children doing so in turn, according to someone’s arbitrary moral standards, certain kinds of people would have long since crowded out all the others and taken over the planet. So the answer must be, evolution favors more than just what some people think of as proper, and that, for humans, it’s more important than who has progeny with whom. Humans are also about communities.
Neither homosexuality nor gender variance involve anything more or less scientifically curious, to me, anyway, than it is a scientific curiosity why some people like asparagus and hate mushrooms.
The fact is, we don’t want to take people at their word when they say they have certain feelings and likes and dislikes, and moralizers refuse to take them at their word. That is a moral failing.
or not) is simply what it is: Human expression. IMHO, It’s more than just fulfilling an identity, it’s longing to be whole.
I think the world would be a far better place if we looked at each other as artistic works, and searched for the intrinsic beauty in our behaviour. My personal approach to these issues is aesthetic.
When I look at the tatoos on the barely clad Mojave Indians of the 1850’s, I see expressions of their universe and joy within themselves. I live in a different world: My God, our lives are so short!
H’mmmm.
I know quite a bit about gender ahedonia but not enough to proclaim myself An Expert™. So please take that into consideration while reading.
(Hopelessly simplifying!)
When you get down to the nitty-gritty of it all, there is testosterone and estrogen and the balance of the two during fetal development has A Lot to do with expression of physical characteristics: penis, vagina, boobs, & etc, of a baby and the pre-set course and trajectory of physical development during maturation.
Testosterone and estrogen are commonly known to the hormones, but they are also neural transmitters.
The basis and development of Gender Self-identification is by no means well understood, at least by me, but it seems to arise “spontaneously” – meaning we don’t have a good idea of how it happens and what the factor(s) is/are – in the early stages of socialization and enculturalization. That is, who is “my” peer group and “what” gender role(s) am I expected to play. (There may, or may not, be a bit of sexual orientation going on here as well – outside my interests, frankly.)
Somewhere along the line during fetal development a disjunction in the ‘normal’ development between testosterone and estrogen as hormones and their work as neuro-transmitters diverged.
At this point it is vital to understand: the brain and mind are ONE thing. We have a Brain/Mind Unity. This Unity can be divided for analytical purposes, in fact it almost has to be to Get Anything Done, but that cannot be allowed to obscure the underlying Truth: the Brain influences the Mind and the Mind influences the Brain and, through the enduro-neural system, the entire body.
Stemming from this it becomes possible to glimpse, however dimly, why transsexuals Self-Identify with the “opposite sex” during childhood.
(An excellent portrayal of this and the various actions and reactions of “normals” to a young transsexual is in the film Ma vie en rose. See it.)
It is also possible to glimpse why, during puberty and it’s associated flood of hormones intended to prepare the individual for sexual reproduction, All Hell breaks loose.
The hormonal system is merrily flooding the body to develop the required primary and secondary sex characteristics necessary for reproduction matching their physical characteristics while their enduro-neural, neural, and Mind – writ large – requires the exact opposite, speaking simply.
The result is what is called “severe gender related psychological dysfunction” in the jargon and “sheer hell” by those who experience it.
31% of transsexuals commit suicide.
And here, I’m afraid, I lose my scientific objectivity. I don’t want to start screaming in rage, ranting, and swearing so let me merely state, the way society reacts to transsexuals – especially those in adolescence – is appalling.