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To answer that, I have to rely on the foremost experts on the subject. From the publication Transsexualism: The Current Medical Viewpoint, "transsexualism is a Gender Identity Disorder in which there is a strong and on-going cross-gender identification, i.e. a desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex. There is a persistent discomfort with his or her anatomical sex and a sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex. There is a wish to have hormonal treatment and surgery to make one's body as congruent as possible with one's psychological sex". What causes Transsexualism? The document referred to above, describes at length, in medical terms, the work done and the findings published by the many medical researchers into the syndrome. To summarise, it's a combination of factors: genetics, pre-natal hormonal, post-natal social, and post-pubertal hormonal. I'll attempt to put that into plain English - but it's not going to be easy. It's a combination of nature and nurture. Nature, in that how our bodies are formed is determined by how our cells respond to hormonal stimuli. Nurture, in how society reacts to anatomical gender and instils behaviours according to the prevailing culture. Human anatomical gender is not determined until the second month of pregnancy, when receptors in the body's cells, intended to develop into primary gender characteristics, respond to hormone levels in the bloodstream. Receptors are like switches which 'turn on' cell behaviour. So, cells pre-programmed by the DNA 'blue-print' could potentially develop into ovaries, vagina, etc., or testes, penis, etc. Similarly, receptors in the brain determine how the brain will develop. Recently, a study has been carried out on a region in the hypothalamus of the brain, which is smaller in women than in men. Autopsies of male-to-female Transsexuals showed that a high proportion had a hypothalamus the same size or smaller than females. This apparently supports a hypothesis that gender identity stems from an inter-action between the developing brain and sex hormones. It's also been discovered that brain and reproductive organs develop at different times, with fluctutation in hormone levels causing conflicting results. One word you could use to describe nature is 'diverse'. Diverse, in that given the billions of cells in our body, they can each develop in billions of combinations. That's how we are all individualistic in our looks and behaviours. It's through this diversity that the human race survives. If we were all genetically identical, then the bug that kills one, will kill all. I'm digressing, but to get onto the 'nurture' side of things, it's simple to observe how people in different societies respond to the anatomical gender of their offspring. They are channelled into one of two sets of behaviours - boys and girls are 'trained' to behave according to their genital arrangement, unaware that genetics determine behaviours also - ref. brain development. How often have we heard reference to left and right brain behaviours - right, being the artistic, emotional side, left, logical and calculating. It's the conflict unwittingly introduced through gender stereotyping that induces Gender Identity Disorder. It's about being conditioned to behave according to a given set of unwritten social rules which feel at odds with your natural tendencies. There is no right or wrong about this, but our society is learning that the behaviours once categorised as belonging exclusively to males or females are in fact available to all of us. For western females, this awareness of their potential has enabled them to achieve social advances in the last century. Male conditioning and the associated peer pressure has made this transition more difficult. Admission of inner feelings has become impossible for many, and the suicide rate for 18 to 35 year old males has risen at an alarming rate for the last 30 years, as they try to work things out for themselves, rather than share their troubles. People have to accept that there is a lot of middle ground between the male/female poles, where there are overlaps that take into account individuals' natural tendencies, and the balance of male/female behaviours. |
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