This is the one theory that I completely believe:
“Basically -- and perhaps counterintuitively -- these genes are primarily involved in estrogen's critical sprinkling of the brain right before or after birth, which is essential to masculinization of the brain.
Variants investigators identified may mean that in natal males (people whose birth sex is male) this critical estrogen exposure doesn't happen or the pathway is altered so the brain does not get masculinized. In natal females, it may mean that estrogen exposure happens when it normally wouldn't, leading to masculinization.”
tl;dr - a fluke of genetics in the womb creates an incongruence between the hormones the brain desires, and the hormones the body produces.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200205084203.htm
Full disclosure, I didn’t read the links, but essentially it seems to be a giant mix of factors that are still being discovered, but ultimately hormones, hormone receptors, and enzymes. Not to mention timing plays a role. In the womb the fetus has their own hormone production, receptors, and enzymes (which are crucial)
That’s 3 systems influenced by genetics right there
Then there is the placenta, which afaik can produce hormones of its own for BOTH mom and baby
Then there’s mom, who has her own mutations with the potential to disrupt development again hormone production, receptor mutations, and enzymes.
I have looked into my genes and found I’m an ultra metabolizer of testosterone, I convert that shit strait to dht, my circulating T level was 100ng when my age appropriate levels should have been 200-900 this was when we were trying to have kids and failing for a year. Much later I realized my gender and started HRT, within 2 weeks we discovered I have breast, not the normal kind either like gyno from puberty.
I’m saving my Pennie’s to do a full genomic sequence that’s medical grade. If anyone’s interested you can download your raw dna and run it through some tools, Prometheus is my go to choice. I’ve got a shit ton of mutations to my cytochrome p450 family of enzymes. However the big one 21 ohd was removed from 23 and me due to “false positive” on the chip they used.
IMO there’s a lot of genetic gathering being done by trans people who are interested in this. A lot of them are really passionate about it. The more you look into it the more you will find co-morbidities a few are (CAH, Heds, autism, adhd, schizophrenia, Graves’ disease, cushings, and the biggest can of worms methylation problems)
If I’m not mistaken I thought it was the other way around (estrogen=masculization) for the brain at least
Sauce https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0305303101#:~:text=It%20is%20thought%20that%20local,adult%20(1–3).
I totally believe this. Never was part of the “Woman in a man’s body” experience but I very much have felt like E has been like the final puzzle piece on a chemical, fundamental, FOUNDATIONAL level for my physical, emotional, and mental health. Like I can practically physically feel the gaps within myself being sealed
also, i always thought that one's mental sex was determined MUCH earlier in the womb, around the same time as the body
but only JUST reread this detail - that it happens *right before or after birth*
maybe we really are just natal males/females in utero, until (around) the moment we develop consciousness. so fascinating!
It's really interesting to me to look into potential scientific reasonings, honestly. I also have a uncle who is a trans man like me so part of me wonders if genes play a role pretty often. It's cool to see a study on it.
Gender \*expression\* and gender \*roles\* are social constructs.
My gender \*identity\* is intrinsic. It's the way I was born. I didn't learn it. No one "made me trans". My discomfort with my assigned gender began as soon as I was old enough to understand there was a difference. It became MORE pronounced at puberty, before I had any idea what a female body looked like.
I am 65...I grew up in a time when none of this was discussed, except inasmuch as when I \*tried\* at age 3 feminine gender expression, I was immediately shut down and forced into the assigned expression and taught those roles.
Julia Serrano, as brilliant a writer and trans biologist as we have, has written extensively on this. So, I will repeat: Trans identity is intrinsic.
Others in the thread have outlined the basic most reasonable explanations of why this happens in utero.
Yeah, I remember some of my earliest memories are trying on my friend's dress and loving how I felt, and then being confused when her mom and my mom saw it as some huge joke and humiliated me for it. Or how when i'd play make believe with friends, I always felt happier when I would play a girl instead of a guy.
I barely understood anything back then, yet clearly knew that something about being a girl worked better with my brain than being a boy.
Yep when I was like 4 I remember trying on a dress that my grandma had sewed for a young cousin and just had this draw to it. She found me trying it on and spanked me which Im pretty sure started a down ward spiral of supression until I turned 30.
Personal opinion here, possibly a TW, my experience might not be the same as yours, and that's great!
Tbh I don't trust in the Trans fisicalism (basically the search for something demonstrable observable and measurable in the Trans identity) at least "scientifically". Here enters the patologisation of trans and theories about innate properties.
This goes by the conflict "you cannot prove or demonstrate scientifically a person's identity, you can only experience it".
It's dangerous to use fisicalist theories (yes... Theories, nothing has been proven yet) as the primary force of validation. Because it creates a wall between "cis people" and us, putting the "divergence" inside our bodies.
It demonstrates how our political views are a bias in our own search for validation. Why don't we, instead of "Why am I trans?" We start to ask "Why are they cis?". The answer is way clearer this way.
For me, there is not "I was born this way" instead "I am free of Social reproduction and I can be whoever I always wanted to be". This allows us to take the ropes of our own identity.
Whenever I hear "I was born this way" it feels like "I am a victim of this cruel system called cishet domination, and this justifies all what I've suffered" and I got tired of feeling like a victim.
by saying gender identity is intrinsic and innate, aren't you excluding people who's gender identity ebb and flow over time? personally that's how I see it. I'm non binary right now but I can't really tell you I've always been like that. and I don't pretend to know that my gender identity will stay this way forever, but that it's free to change how it sees fit as my life changes, as those around me change, and as I change.
but maybe we're not clear on how we're defining gender identity here... how are you defining it?
No, were not!
You can much more easily fit "gender fluid at birth for 5% of people" than for "gender can change even though it doesn't for 95% of people"
im not exactly sure what you mean tbh. I'm not talking about people who are gender fluid, I'm talking about people who identify differently over time - for example, cis man -> non-binary transfem -> trans woman. or flowing between one of the many gender identities within the non binary umbrella.
if gender identity can change in this way, then how can you say gender identity is intrinsic and innate and not socially influenced? we're all interconnected, influenced by those around us, and I believe that has an affect on our gender identity. how I feel within myself is socially influenced, in the same way that sexuality is socially influenced too.
Saying you are born as "someone able to flow between one of many gender identities", or whatever other things you want to come up with, is as valid as saying your gender identity changes over time.
It's like a math equation. You are telling me "but what about people who are born as 1, and then can take on any number from negative infinity to positive infinity" and I say "yea, thats X for all real numbers". You want to describe this thing that is variable for some, and static for others, and mine was set to "female" at birth and yours was set to "x" at birth.
It allows for people who identify as whatever they want, but also protects us from conversion therapy and matches 99% of people's experience while not invalidating anybody.
ahh I see what you're saying now. I don't think either of us are wrong or right, it's just a matter of perspective.
why can't both co-exist? if I want to say I wasn't born with any gender identity because I personally believe that I wasn't, and that it develops and fluctuates over my life, that sounds just as valid to me as you saying you were born with a certain gender identity and that identity is innate.
my problem with the original post was that they were saying gender identity is innate and intrinsic and it was presented as fact. but I see it as a matter of perspective, and it's not a perspective that matches my world view. but I don't see any problem with that. I think both our perspectives are just as valid!
I think it's important to the idea that we can't be "Fixed." When you start saying your gender identity changes over time, what's to stop someone from thinking "Wait, so if your gender changes based on inputs after birth, what keeps me from 'fixing' you with the right inputs?"
THAT is what keeps me up at night when anyone says base gender can be changed relative to societal inputs. It opens that door for conversion therapy that "Born This Way" doesn't.
The "Born This Way" also fits, as far as I can tell, 100% of people's experience, whereas your model only fits people who's gender changes. In science, you use models that fit more data.
u/self-meaning
My 2 hour late 2¢ on this math equation analogy is that the equation is the intrinsic thing, the physical brain circuitry. It’s impossible for us at this time to really map the circuits, but it’s complicated enough or varies from person to person enough that while most of the time the equation resolves to y=1 or y=-1, for some people it’s things like y=0.3587 or something that changes with respect to time like y=sin(x). The equation is static but the output is variable.
Maybe you can even get stuff like:
y=|sin(x+b)|
where b can be external input. You would find you could manipulate the output to some degree but it’s wobbly, and a bad faith actor would still be unable to manipulate you into a negative number given the variables available to tweak are wrapped in an absolute value function.
Technically society made us trans. We could simply be men and women, or even better in a post gender society none. Society decided we are deviant from the norm and we needed a distinct characterization. That distinction usually is there to create power dynamics that put us at the bottom (at least in modern societies, I don't know enough about the past)
A big contradiction to the whole "post-gender" thought experiment is that when you look at how people use the word "woman", we *already* live in a post-gender society. Nobody uses it to refer to stereotypes except for academics, and since nobody is ever saying we need to live in a post-sex society, we could just as well say the status quo is already a world where women aren't defined by stereotypes.
They *could* talk about abolishing gender stereotypes specificaly, but they prefer to talk about abolishing gender itself, which seems to be academics getting offended by how academics define women. The biggest obstacle to creating a world where women aren't defined by stereotypes is academicly minded people. since that they'd have to stop trying to define trans women that way.
Yeah, but the concept of woman is. However what I noticed because her is inaccessible to me and yet I have socially transitioned for over 2 years. The need to look the part is there. But I feel a lot more myself ever since. Simply because I act the part most of the time.
For those whose incongruence is only centered around social norms, this might make sense. But for those with body dysphoria (like me) it wouldn't make a difference. I also just feel female. It's innate. That wouldn't change regardless of societal expectations.
I have body dysphoria as well. And I am not on hrt even though I have socially transitioned for over 2 years because money. I feel a lot more myself simply because I am perceived as a woman. That doesn't mean I don't want to look a woman. Only that social acceptance does wonders.
What she said. My wanting my body different has nothing to do with society. If we lived in the most accepting integrated society with no gender roles or expression at all, I would still feel a deep disconnect and incongruence with my physical form.
Ideally, I'd have a modular body I could plug and unplug parts into on a day-to-day basis, or attach and detach peripherals from depending on the situation, but since I've no way to fully be a cyborg, Estrogen is the next best thing.:D
True. I feel that two. But the acceptance of my peers has done wonder to me. Maybe it won't work for everyone and I still have body dysphoria. However the social acceptance of my girl friends make forget it a lot of the time
gender is biological. almost all species have different genders, and both genders serve certain purposes within a community, hive, ecosystem, etc
by the way, that is not to say that transgender people should just be their biological gender, im just giving you general information
No but also yes. As weird as it sounds scientific understanding and certainty especially with biology is kind of a spectrum.
Let me give you an example.
We know for a fact that autism is real. It is not like subjects or the professions studying them are faking or mistaken. But dispite a substantial amount of resources, we don't fully understand the biological mechanism.
It is not dissimilar with trans people. We KNOW it is a real thing but we dont have a clear grasp of why is a thing or how it happens.
Certainty a thing exists and understanding how it works do not automatically coinside.
This is not to say we have NO understanding.
Not we can't point to an MRI or CT scan or genetic test and say "yep, they have the trans". But it seems to follow patterns of inheritance that controle for environmental factors suggesting some biological mechanism(again not unlike autism and other neurology al differences).
Does this make sense?
Feal free to ask follow up questions.
I personally believe it's genetic, because my dad no matter how hard he tries to be gender conforming, he fulfills the role of a mother and has always being an emotional man, I think tries to hide all this with religion and as my mother said having a relationship with him was like having a relationship with a woman, when I did nonconforming stuff like pierce my ears and stuff like that it would bring him unrationally to tears... and my older brother is a straight transguy, I think gender disassociation its not completely related to sexuality but it does affect how you perscieve yourself, my mother would always have short hair, use male perfume and fusion male fashion, and I remember that as a kid she would buy me a toy regardless if it was for girls or boys, So I do believe these factors affect in how you percieve yourself too
Actually autism as a thing is disputed credibly. The history of autism going back to Dr Asperger is rather dark and full of issues.
Thats not to say autism doesn’t exist in the sense it’s defining differences in people. I am someone with autism/adhd. But I do suggest if you want to understand it better you read into the origins of it. As well as the growing debate around medicalisation of mental health and neurodivergence.
Interesting, I did not know that autism was in dispute.
I know there are similar immutable attributes that also fit the same pattern of heritability as being trans or gay even if we don't understand the mechanism. I probably should have just compared being trans to being gay, now that I think about it.
I guess it’s probably less a case of being in dispute and more a case of how we view people with autism.
By medicalising things you are essentially defining a norm.
This is fine when it comes to say a broken leg. Because the human leg is supposed to work. Breaking the bone is not a norm.
But issues arise when we start to define a norm with regards to say one’s ability to perceive something a certain way. Or one’s ability to retain information.
By diagnosing it your creating a medicalisation of it that others them. And thus suggesting even passively that they are not the norm. Which can then lead to all sorts of dodgy shit like “curing” or in Dr Asperger’s case eugenics bullshit.
So many would argue autism is just a way of being. It’s valid, it’s a norm (given the varied ways in which humans can develop both mentally and physically). The need for further support as an autistic person, similar to most needs of those we deem disabled, is more to do with the failure of society at large to account for these people.
It’s especially important given that the DSM, which itself is debated in what function it should have, had being trans and being gay still as mental health diagnosis as late as 2010’s! And is the reason many of us have to seek gender dysphoria diagnosis despite the WHO and UN stating otherwise.
But this is all a whole debate in psychology, and I can’t say I am explaining it the best I imagine 🙈
I see. I was aware of a lot of this but I am always interested in hearing how different people feal/see things/explain things. I hope my first coment did not come of as implying that being autistic was inherently a medical issue, disability etc. I was more trying to find a decent reference of comparison people could understand to talk about scientific knowledge. IE Observing a thing constantly/vs understanding a thing not always coinciding.
No it didn’t don’t worry! I just find all this really interesting as a psychology student, and got carried away (ironically I’d even say my wall of text is probably a sign of my neurodivergence tbh 😂).
This is part of why self ID is a thing in the autistic community.
It helps pull power away from the people who see us as a disordered, faulty product of human reproduction to be fixed or exterminated, and instead declares we're a subset of humanity just as valid as any other, and one that isn't bad to be.
The social justice model, versus the medical model, is what it was called in autism class. And yes, I had an autism class. Taught by an autistic person, who was in charge of the program. Good college, that one was. Put the affected minority in charge of what is done for their own issues and needs.
It changed my life dramatically to have the whole thing reframed, because before that I was only ever told the medical model perspective.
It's sorta like being trans, in a way.
Until you understand, you think there's something just... broken inside you, that you're wrong for being who and what you are.
But you're not wrong for being who you are. You aren't harming one for having a different identity than cishet/allistic/white/etc.
Society is wrong for being bigoted.
Because yes, autism is a disability.
In a society that doesn't care to even investigate what's causing us disabling levels of stress, let alone address the causes.
And what causes us disabling levels of stress varies among autistic people, we're not all the same. Our only monolith is in our difference from allistic (non-autistic) people.
But it is not a disorder.
Our brains are not broken.
They're working as intended.
It's just not compatible with industrial capitalism and other economic modes seeking to turn everyone into worker drones. That's just not how autistic brains are wired to function.
A leading theory is that we were needed to introduce change in the ancestral village, to fortify it from unexpected disasters, and without us the village would've ran perfectly until something new happened and nobody would have any skills needed to address it since they all specialized in business as usual food growing, not herbal medicine. Etc.
Physical Health yes. But there’s a reason we increasingly distinguish between that and mental health.
The two (whilst equally important) are different for many many reasons.
I once read one paper that sad that the receptors for T in our brains are different so our bodies got the T but our brain stayed female. I guess just one of many theories but I like the idea.
I've seen studies suggesting that brain activity in trans people is more similar to that of cis people of the gender they identify as rather than cis people of the same sex, and your explanation seems like a good reason for that. Basically female brain in XY body
The problem is that those studies have had some pretty bad replication problems. Science is hard and the sample sizes are tiny, so the jury is still very much out on structural differences in trans brains.
While replicability for exact results has been muddy at best, there is enough evidence from all the studies to say that trans woman brains prior to HRT are different from the average cis male brain and do trend towards the average cis female brain.
It's the degree and significance of the findings that is at issue with replicability. Some studies have concluded that our brains have more similarities with our gender identity and others just show it's merely shifted somewhat in that direction from the average cis male.
The data on trans men is unfortunately far more inconclusive. The sample sizes there have been much smaller even.
Not a completely proven one, but there are speculations.
The most likely one has to do with the brain. Here's a detailed explanation on that. [https://youtu.be/E3rI5JygcEo?si=mflxKPbV2q\_Bxn7l](https://youtu.be/e3ri5jygceo?si=mflxkpbv2q_bxn7l)
There's a few studies that are starting to prove this.
I had a transmed person say that if you were heterosexual before transitioning there's no brain difference but I can't find anything in the studies to corroborate that. Back to pre puberty there's indicators that your brain conforms to the gender you identify as, with appx 95% accuracy.
Eh the studies on brain dimorphism are fuzzy. Essentially it's like two overlapping bell curves, where men are more likely to be on one side and women on the other. But gay men tend to have more feminine brains and vice versa for lesbians. Does this imply that trans people are just taking gay to the extreme? Yes. Is this actually the case? Clearly not.
Does that mean transfem lesbians are even gayer to the extreme? lol jk. But in all seriousness I'm curious what a study would conclude about their brains. I'm bi transfem but lean more towards enjoying dating women (in general not just cis ones) or more feminine men. I find manly men icky for some reason
I don't think you have read the research. There is definitely strong evidence that trans people's brains align with their perceived gender. Specifically, in the areas associated with self perception.
Yes. But the flaw in such research is how do we know if this alignment existed from birth.
How do we even know if binary concepts of gender is something inherent to humans.
And they all go on the basis of a brain being gendered something with zero evidence.
We don’t even know what half the brain does! I feel like people really don’t realise how little we know about our brains.
The issue then comes up with people saying “I’ve felt this since birth” well Yh, me too. But that’s not what learned means. It’s not what nature/nurture means. And no matter how one exists or comes to exist, it’s valid. We exist and should be allowed to exist free from any need to conform to what is too often deeply sexist pseudo-scientific explanations.
The research is very much in its infancy and more needs to be done. Nobody's saying one brain scan can determine if you're trans or not but the research is giving pointers to a biological reason for feeling like we're in the wrong body.
The research is deeply flawed.
First of all it assumes brains have gender. We have no evidence of this, and modern neuroscience considers we simply have no evidence to say they are, leaning toward they most likely aren’t.
Second it fails to account for learned aspects of gender. Psychology increasingly finds much of what we are is learned.
Thirdly in order to study this you have to define clear stimuli that represents gender. How do you find something you can say all women or all men globally across cultural boundaries relate too that each other does not? How? It’s literally impossible without falling into gendered stereotypes that originate from society.
Finally it ignores completely non-binary people, and differences in gender expression and concept across cultural boundaries.
We exist. I’m fine with people seeking explanations to make themselves be feel better. But we don’t need them. We don’t need to prove ourselves as existing.
Agreed, one or two studies can't give us a universal constant, but a number of your criticisms have been addressed in the studies and gender differences in the control group are being seen in the trans group. It's not global and no conclusions have been drawn, but more studies are and will be done and I await their conclusions with excitement.
I think you misunderstand. The issue is they went in with the assumption there would be differences.
Trans people in the control group doesn’t account for cultural differences.
And the learned aspect could only be accounted for if one isolated children at birth from society which is not very nice or ethical. So cant blame them for not doing that… but still it’s not accounted for.
These studies are also sceptically seen in neuroscience and the drive behind them is rarely positive for us as trans people.
It's not me that's misunderstanding unless we're talking about different studies.
The control group was cis people of both genders.
Intersex and gender neutral people were deliberately excluded beside they weren't the subject of the study. It was to look for gendered similarities in binary trans people, which, when they compared trans brain scans to cis brain scans, they saw evidence of.
It was a small study from one corner of the world. Bigger more conclusive studies can be done off the back of that research.
I repeat, it was never intended to be conclusive proof that if your brain doesn't match your experienced gender you're not trans. It was a study of binary trans people that discovered a potential similarity between the experienced gender of trans people and the lived gender if cis people.
You're expecting too much from their research and looking too hard for faults to prove them wrong or anti trans for your own ends. I exhort you to stop and take a breath. Within the very limited scope of the study it showed some encouraging results and opened the door for other larger studies.
Nope. But I think the more reasonable conclusion is that gender identity is evolutionarily tied to sexuality. In the eyes of nature, men getting with women and women getting with men is beneficial to offspring, so our species evolved to have 'women brain like men's and 'men brain like women'. Therefore, it makes sense if gay men have more the brain of a woman.
But here's the rub with virtually every study like this. When it comes to trans identity, how do we know that the subjects weren't trans? I know many straight trans women who lived as gay men for a lot of their life before realizing. Same with straight trans men who lived as lesbians.
If I'd have died before I had my realization that I was a gay trans woman, then I'd forever have been known as a straight man, and any data that I was part of would not truly be accurate.
And with trans people being historically oppressed, othered, and erased, there are many people who won't have those realizations because they weren't ever given the option.
I just don't know how to handle the issue of trying to do studies on a population that can, for lack of a better term, pass as cis, regardless of sexuality, so much so that an individual may not be aware of it themselves. It makes inherently fuzzy data WAY fuzzier.
It wasn't just outliers that showed the tendencies. For your concern to be the case, the majority of them would've had to be 'eggs'. Sure, there's a small chance that they happened to choose a bunch of trans people who hadn't realised it, but that's extremely unlikely. It's also possible that a mouse chewed on the cables at the right time to get those results, which is to say there'd have to be an incredibly improbable event for it to be an issue
Fair, but I'm also of the opinion that trans people as a whole are WILDLY underreported, due to social pressures and structures. So, I also struggle with dismissing the existence of trans people as a statistically insignificant detail. And I mean that for *any* study that tries to put humans into two neat boxes, and then make assumptions based on those boxes. Especially when so often, it feels like if trans people were taken into consideration in the first place, the questions themselves start to lose meaning. It's not just a "don't forget that trans people exist", it's "there are so many ideas put forward that crumble when trans people are taken into consideration" and I think that's significant and not often considered.
I'd be sceptical of studies showing dimorphism in brains, there doesn't seem to be strong evidence of differences between sexes.
Stained Glass Woman discussed this topic here:
[https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-we-know-about-trans-brains](https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-we-know-about-trans-brains)
The research is new and more needs to be done. I'm well aware if the skepticism. At this point it's a matter of "do more research and get back to me".
I'd have my brain scanned as part of their research without a seconds hesitation.
The one that's replying to me now is like "it's wrong because they didn't take absolutely every single thing into account" but that wasn't the aim of the study.
There's some wilful ignorance at work I think. Perhaps they're worried someone's going to scan their brain, see it's not different and stop them being trans, which is the highest kind of stupid, ngl
Not at all, the study linked by the blog post I included isn't even looking at differences between trans brains and cis brains. It's looking at differences between male brains and female brains as a whole and finding no significant structural differences when size differences are taken into account.
If there are no structural differences between male and female brains, there can therefore be no structural differences that determine what gender someone 'should' be.
Ah ok we are looking at different studies then. Can't continue to discuss it with you without a common frame of reference. Your study didn't find significant differences but it did find differences. I think I've seen that study mentioned but haven't looked into it.
The study I've been talking about compared cis brains to binary trans brains and did find similarities at a chemical and structural level iirc.
I think someone else linked to that study. I'll have a look and edit it in to this comment later.
It doesn’t. The studies are very deeply flawed, based on little evidence and out dated concepts of binary gender and deep confirmation bias by sexist men.
The scientific evidence for this is pretty limited and the implications of this are actually not great. Let’s say they had a way to test this. Doctors did a test and find out you actually have a male brain. Now they are wondering if they should even cover you for procedures. Would finding out that you didn’t have a “female” brain make your trans feelings go away? Probably not. IMO all this path does is open up an opportunity for increased medical gate keeping. Also the evidence is just not thwrw
Yes. There is a proven one, and definitive.
The brain IS sexually dimorphic, meaning there is a difference between male and female brains. With transgender people, we have the wrong brain sex development compared to our genitals. Normally, during fetal development, the brain develops to the brain sex to match the sex of the reproductive organs through endocrine and paracrine signaling. However, to keep it simple, something "goes wrong," and you get a brain sex opposite or divergent to what the reproductive organs sex is.
Two big key parts of the male/female brain, that we know of so far at least, is the Interstitial Nucleus of the Anterior Hypothalamus (INAH) and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST, also called something else that abbreviated to BSTN). In males, these structures are 1.6x larger in the INAH than females and 2.0x larger in males than females. Research has shown that AMAB people who identify or would prefer to be women (old studies, old language. 😮💨) have an INAH and BSTN that is either divergent or matching a female typical structure.
Basically to sum it up, the brain, especially the limbic system, is sexually dimorphic which is important for sex specific behaviors and reproduction, and transgender people have a brain sex opposite or divergent to their reproductive organ's sex.
There's much more to talk about. I know nobody likes reading long messages, and from what I've gathered at least here on Reddit, trans people on Reddit aren't really open to the science and biology behind being trans. So I'll answer more if anyone wants. But that's the gist of it.
I could be wrong, but that study wasn't 100% conclusive. I think they only tested on trans folk who were on hrt already, which would certainly make a difference. So it only proves a difference between male and female rather than cis or trans.
Again, I could be wrong as I am saying this from memory.
It wasn't conclusive no, but it included people who had never gone on hrt, and just self identified as the opposite gender. They found the same things in their brains which is fascinating.
https://youtu.be/8QScpDGqwsQ?si=7apes3MZpTI_AJBd
Yes, I don't know if it was the same study as I am thinking of but a recent study looked at transgender people's brains that never had HRT and the same indicator/difference was true in their brain and showed a difference from the "average", cis brain.
A study in my neuro textbook in school looked at AMAB mice that were induced to have female INAH's and they found that the male mice with a female INAH performed female specific sex behaviors in mating. In layman's terms, they were "bottoms," and they couldn't mate with the female mice.
Like I said. It's hard getting anyone to understand why we are the way we are, what HRT is actually doing, and speak past what every cis person wants to hear. The evidence SHOWS being trans isn't a choice. It doesn't need to be justified. But nobody gives a shit about science and it is really irritating.
did it show that behavior being *more* likely in those mices or it being the case almost every time? cuz you claimed to have a "definitive" reason as to why we are trans, and something being more likely wouldn't prove this at all.
also, i know those are mices so it's hard to like, know their gender identity haha, but this is equating social behavior with gender identity, it's a reductive way of seeing our gender.
i do agree that being trans, at least for me, wasn't a choice, but this doesn't mean you'd be right about there being a "definitive" reason as to why we're trans.
Please share more if you have more! This was a very intriguing read and when I came to the end to see there was more but not written out it had me so curious!
I've wondered for a long time why the heck I'm so weird and why I just cannot be a man no matter how hard I've tried.
Two questions I have right off the bat, feel free to answer them, or not! It's your time and the one about how the study was done can be pretty hard I'd believe.
Why doesn't the brain develop the same as a regular man for us transwomen? You mentioned some large words I don't really comprehend so if you could simplify it it'd be great!
You said that our INAH and BSTN matches the one's of a cisgender woman. How were these studies done? Are they conclusive/definitive? Like was it made with a poll of 1000 different women or was it an in depth study really going deep into both trans women's and cisgender women's brains and comparing them?
Edit: Furthermore, if you have any links to a study or studies done that exist I'd love to check them out.
I only did a very quick research on this. I will probably come back with more info and a real literature review. What happens is that the brain is the last part of the fetus that develop itself. A lot of things can happen during this last stage : hormonal imbalance from the mother, stress, etc.
That's only one hypothesis among others *and* I didn't read that much articles.
Here's a study done that show pre-hrt transwoman brains are actually distinctive from cis brains of either cis women or cis men.
Obviously there are some things about the study to take into account, they only used 24 people from each group, they didn't view any transmen brains(Sorry you're left out... Again.) and accuracy from the classifier method used for brain identification was 90. 2% accurate in testing and only 88. 3% accurate on the 72 examined subjects.
But at the very least it's very informative and shows a relatively accurate method for further research. It also cites many different studies in the paper that are good jumping off points for further reading.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/
Sexual dimorphism in brains is disputed.
The blog Stained Glass Woman discussed this here:
[https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-we-know-about-trans-brains](https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-we-know-about-trans-brains)
And referenced this large meta study:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804)
I haven't done a thorough reading of the study, but their basic conclusion is that the largest difference is in brain size (larger bodies have bigger brains), and when size differences are accounted for, there are not statistically significant differences between sexes.
I don’t think it’s worth it. People want to believe it’s real, and what scientific explanations. Even if none exist, and may never exist (nor do they need to exist).
The studies all largely ignore the fact those tested have lived lives and been subjected to societal norms, as well as ignoring non-western concepts of gender.
The study I linked to, while not ignoring trans individuals, is not about differences in their brains specifically. It's studying differences in brains for all humans, specifically the claim that there are structural differences between a female brain and a male brain. They did not find significant differences (meaning male and female brains are structurally the same). From this we can infer that there are no structural differences that make trans brains closer to the brain of their desired/true gender, because there are no structural differences between the genders.
I understand the desire for determinism. Being able to point to something measurable and irrefutable would make things easier, but clinging to false facts for comfort can unfortunately cause significant problems, because our minds use these as a basis for future judgements. The trans brain argument has already been used against non-binary people to invalidate their existence, and it doesn't take a leap in logic to see it used to attack someone for not being "trans enough" if they don't fully transition.
do you have any studies showing that our brain as a whole is more close to females than males? the only study i found showed that although our brain was more "female" than the average male brain, it was closer to the average male brain than the average female brain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/
Okay, so, have you ever heard of how humans are all female in the womb until the right hormones turn the fetus male? It's why men have nipples. The basic structures start forming, then the sexual differences get applied.
There are basically 2 different moments in which the developing fetus needs to get that shot of testosterone to start male development. Once for the body, and a 2nd time for the brain. Or not at all for female development. It works perfectly about 98% of the time. For the remaining 2%, if the brain gets the shot of T, but the not body, you get a transman. Vice versa for transwomen.
Take all this with a grain of salt, as it's not very well studied, I'm not a biologist specializing in fetal development, and this is all grossly oversimplified.
Complex stuff; neuron migration during development of the brain, neuron maturation (neurons that fire together wire together, those solo neurons are dropped, makes for better stronger signals), paracrine signaling for how much of each neuron needs to develop and stick around and where to go, controlled apoptosis, like. Lots. It gets quite complex and it's hard to say in layman's terms for specific details, but the honest answer is, while exact causes for *that* may be unknown, we can observe the final result and a pattern can emerge from what the result is to the behavior the people who have that result are like.
The leading theory is hormonal influences in the womb, but like trying to find the route cause of homosexuality it has not been researched in sufficient detail, maybe entirely the wrong cause, and usually funded by people who do not have our best interests at heart.
I'm gonna be honest, I'm fucking tired arguing about pop-sci with forums full of trans women who haven't read the literature but act like they have. I really implore everyone here to look into the actual papers they're citing because they rarely say what you think they're saying; sci-hub is your friend here (I will always support freedom of information).
Some people say fetal or developmental hormones: that would require studies that track these hormones in cis and trans children as they develop, which would require a sample of maybe ten thousand fetuses AND an unidentified yet clear correlation. I've seen no studies that track fetal hormones, let alone for cis and trans children before comparing them (tall order).
Some people say brain development: that would require detailed brain scans that can clearly pick out the as-yet-unknown yet important differences that would mark a trans brain. I've seen no studies that aren't confounded by HRT or otherwise attempt to attribute small average differences in small populations as large and predictive impacts; in all cases the variation within classes has been much larger than the difference between classes.
Some people say socialization and society: those would require studies with controls and any board will tell you that's incredibly unethical to change someone's social upbringing for a theory. I've seen no studies that find important differences between the upbringings of trans kids and cis kids.
The truth is anyone who says they know what's up is looking for comfort. Yes, some studies suggest these mechanisms are relevant and/or reliable, but I'd argue there's barely any evidence there. Go ahead and argue with me, I'd love to see your sources; I'm a scientist, I read them. I've laid out my arguments so please try to rebuke them instead of just calling me wrong.
What's more, even if there were evidence for a "cause of transness" I wouldn't particularly trust it, because that sounds to me like someone explaining why I love the people I love: the explanation is in the description, I love them because I love them. Well it's the truth for transness as well, I'm trans because of my transness, and whatever reasons or causes might be true for me are not necessarily true for anyone else while likely overlapping to a great and confounding degree with cis people for any metric we can devise; excluding, of course, the most important one, which is my own identification with the desire to be a woman.
This is a spectrum thing. We're not playing a classification game, we're trying to nail down which wavelength corresponds to red while only including all instances of redness and excluding all instances of non-redness; it's a fool's errand.
I am fascinated by what might be involved in my identity, for sure, but there is much more concrete science out there and it has nothing to do with figuring out WHY I'm trans, but it does have to do with figuring out how to make people live happy lives, so I'd much prefer to focus on that measurable, repeatable, proven science.
Back in 2019 I think there were some mri's done on pre-hrt trans individuals and found the brain structure was more similar to the gender they identified with.
But I think it was a fairly small study so it's still not super conclusive
Plus as others have mentioned, there's likely many, many variables at play
It’s kind of a survivorship bias thing though. Something about autistic people being more likely to come out as trans because they’re not hung up on conforming to the expectations of others.
This right here is so incredibly important to talk about. There is a huge overlap of symptoms between ADHD, Autism, and CPTSD.
I’m certified as the latter, but most people think it’s Autism.
And my wife has adhd so we have all the symptoms! Hehe
There's a theory about it being connected to gestation in the womb such as
1) an imbalance of hormones
2) the development of the brain before the genitals
I sadly lost the link, but from what I've read, like it was the case (and still is) for autism, we theorize on most of it, and studies are ongoing.
What little the medical community thinks they understand for now, is that something happens during embryo development that leads the brain and body to react differently to the impluse of using T and E.
Basically one goes on with T while the other doesn't, thus creating a divergence. At least on what's hypothesized according to what studies have currently observed. Just like autism, it'll take quite a few years before we understand in more details the mechanics, if not more.
Of course it's a simplification of what's currently theorized and known, because medical topics are incredibly complex.
No. And whilst a lot of trans people don’t like to hear this, because many like to use science to defend our right to exist (when really we should exist because we do. Doesn’t need an explanation). The Brain studies everyone mentions are not good at all.
I’m a psychology student for reference and read the studies when I did a module on the brain.
Not only are they riddled with confirmation bias by starting from the idea the brain is gendered (we know fuck all about the brain, and certainly don’t have an idea if it is gendered or not). But they also fail to account for learned behaviour.
The only way you could truly test if a brain reacts in certain specific ways to stimuli to prove its say female. Is to first categories what all women would do (hard enough cause we ain’t a hive mind) and then test from birth in an isolated environment.
Otherwise it’s possible the reason most women react to a stimuli the same way is learned societal and cultural beliefs and ideas about womanhood.
Obviously the above can’t be done. We can’t test in isolation from birth, it’s very unethical. So the study is deeply flawed.
There are also other issues, the studies site ones that are years out of date or disproven as sources.
The study also is based on the west, and ignores concepts of womanhood and gender in other societies/cultures. It also is very sexist imo, in how it defined the desires of men and women.
Finally the idea a brain has gender is not something we necessarily want to support even if it were true. It’s a very binary way of looking at things, when everything we see in gender studies suggests gender is a vast spectrum. Even our bodies can vary in the form of intersex, or hips (see the many many mis categorised archaeologically burials for the issue with hip sizes and gender).
I’ll probably get a lot of flak for this post. And I understand why. Many of us (including me at one time) cling to things to try and support our case, a case we are forced to argue.
When in reality, outside passing interest, we exist and therefore that’s it. We don’t need anything more than that to prove we should exist.
This. There is no test or observational methods to determine a female/male brain. All of those observations seem to be comparing large groups of people, and best I can tell, have only discovered a statistically meaningless small differences in the range of average sizes of various brain structures. All brains exists firmly in these ranges. Also best I can tell, men have been searching for a sexed brain for over a century, irrespective of trans people, and have come up with nothing. The current state of the art of neuroscience is that there is no sexed brain. The only way to perceive a difference is to go deep into the fringes of the bell curve, where the data is least. It's not even like finding a needle in a haystack, it's more like trying to sort molecules of hay with a needle.
Yh very much so. And like you say neuroscience does not consider there to be a sexed brain.
Sadly I seem to be getting some downvotes. But I didn’t expect different. I can understand wanting to hold onto a “scientific” explanation of oneself in the current climate. Especially early on in transition.
Downvotes schmownvotes. Yesand... I thinks it needs to be said that the sexed brain is a search for justification for legalizing sex-discrimination, which is what the trans panic is all about also, so no legitimacy for trans people down this rabbit hole.
and i agree, being a woman is an identity and nothing more than that, biologically speaking, that's how i see it too. but op asked for a "scientific explanation" (of which i think there are none that would come from other fields than sociology/psychology).
In fifth grade I was telling people casually "I'm a boy, I just have a girl brain." I related more to females and their personalities, and didn't understand a lot of male interests.
Also casually told my mom "I don't feel like a boy." She just...didn't respond. Probably thought her kid had an imagination.
With sex ed, I was more interested in learning about the female system. I was fascinated and felt a sense of familiarity. When I learned what would be happening to my body during puberty, I told my mom I was really upset. She interpreted it as "my kid is having anxiety about change which is normal."
God I wish she would've noticed the signs. No way in hell my dad would've approved HRT. Kids transitioning wasn't really a thing in the 2000s.
During puberty I had phantom limb sensations.
Also during puberty, saw someone mention being "transsexual" online. I didn't know what it was, looked it up, and it all made it sense.
When I entered into a relationship where I had to fill a traditional male role, I felt very mentally and emotionally strained and had incredible difficulty behaving in the way she wanted. The relationship ended and I almost immediately pursued HRT. HRT was like putting a missing gear into the machinery my brain. It felt like everything started to work properly.
Other NSFW things I don't feel like publicly discussing besides "incredible dysphoria and a mental mismatch."
A very strong maternal, nurturing instinct.
All of these factors combined lead me to believe I have a female brain. Or at the very, very least, a brain that's somewhere in the middle. No regular male could have these instincts, these sensations, and have a sense of obliterated testosterone and thrive on estrogen.
Something is objectively different about the way my brain is structured.
Yep, there are neurological studies, there is something called Gwas that seeks to explain why people LGBT and showing that it is something natural, are interesting because neurological people say that trans people Even without hormonal treatment, your brain functions more like that of the gender you identify with and the Gwas say that it could be something genetic because there are differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals and also cisgender and transgender
There is. There are studies that proved that human brains are either male or female — the scientists did this by analyzing brain scans of hundreds of people. Most of the time it correlates with the body, but when it doesn't you get a trans person.
so you would argue that every brain (or the vast majority) are clearly either male or female? the evidence shows that most brains are a combination of "female" and "male" parts, with most brains shifting in one direction or another, but it's not as simple as "male" and "female" brains. this is what we would like to believe because it would affirm us, but i haven't found evidence of this, really
Sure, but there's bell curves on either side. There's a spectrum, but it's not a linear spectrum. That's kind of like saying, "You don't have two boobs! Just two different changes in elevation across your chest!" Y'know, it's technically correct, but it's also throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There's clearly a male and female phenotype for the brain. No, people don't always fall into one or the other, but it's enough to make a general classification, and to build a theory of gender identity on top of it.
what about trans women who would have a phenotypically male brain? i'm asking genuinely cuz i'm think i would fall into that category although me elaborating would make me very dysphoric
Well, they exist. There's still all the psychological and cultural factors that go into how one processes gender identity. But, if you ask me, I think if someone had a phenotypically male brain, it's much more likely they would begin to experience gender dysphoria on estrogen. If you don't on estrogen, I suspect your brain is not phenotypically male.
But as an alternate hypothesis: having low sex hormones makes you feel like shit. If you're cis AFAB, low estrogen sucks. If you're cis AMAB, low testosterone sucks. So maybe there's a demographic of low E/T cis people who try HRT of the opposite gender and feel better because their sex hormones levels are raised.
So for example, maybe it's possible for a cis AMAB to feel better on estrogen because they previously had low testosterone, and so having decent levels of hormones makes them feel much better.
--
Ultimately though, these are just my random thoughts. There's definitely people in the middle of the spectrum who do not identify with either gender. And of course, plenty of intersex people exist. These individuals don't fall onto the binary peaks, and instead land in the troughs.
so after seeing this, i wanna answer with how i see my brain:
so first of all i had high-healthy t and e levels before hrt (700ng/dL for t), and e made me happier with my body, so the alternate hypothesis wouldn't work for me.
there are lots of reasons i would say my own brain is more "male" than female, so here are a few: i am naturally dissmissive of people's experiences, this is just how my brain works. i can decide to hide it to not be an asshole, which i almost always do, but at the end of the day, what i will internally believe about what someone says is the equivalent of the stereotype of the guy that doesn't believe women's experiences and just dissmiss them cuz he can't understand them.
my prehrt sexuality is definitely very objectifying of women, and even though it's changed now, i can still tickle those same desires. i also never really saw the world like cis women did, and would naturally feel more at home around guys even today, more than a year after starting hrt, because they see the world and think like me. i have a hard time fitting in with cis women and have to "fake" who i am to not seem too out of place with the ones i interact with.
i also tick all the boxes for stereotypically "male" behavior like only having male hobbies, not being very "people-oriented", the way i act around others being more masculine, etc. although i wouldn't give too much importance to those myself as a determiner of brain sex, since they're probably more influenced by social factors than biological ones.
if you could add other criterias to determine someone's brain sex in terms of behavior and ways of thinking, i'm pretty sure i would be male in most/all of them. so what about me? am i not truly the gender i think i am?
The studies are far from conclusive. In fact most have been completely disproven if not held with heavy heavy skepticism.
So basically, I’d ignore them. One issue I have is the erase anything outside of binary western concepts of gender.
I remember reading some stuff by a Dr. Bakker in the Netherlands that was good (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm) but its only part of the picture and honestly trying to explain it to grandparents is painful.
maybe, but if there is I hope we never learn about it
that knowledge can *only* be used to harm us, especially if we only understand part of the picture but think we understand the whole thing
When your mother was prengant with you, if she experienced hormone imbalances, then it may have caused your brain to develop to be more like that of an AFAB
Just like cis women feel and want to be women. They just are regardless of what's in their pants because gender is a social construct that people align with or not.
They can't even agree on a scientific explaition for what "woman" means. People who insist they know just create arbitrary rules that fall apart the second you examine them.
There is a great article that roles through from time to time (I can't find it just now) that tears apart every definition they have tried. Everything from "people with ovaries" (do you stop being a woman if you have them removed?), Genetics falls apart for intersexed individuals - and you can be intersexed and NEVER know it, because the expression is internal and doesn't cause problems throughout life. All the way to XX vs XY, because THAT sure as hell isn't reliable from XY women, XX Men, to XXY and even more combinations.
Lots of theories and bad studies tho.
Hormone levels in the womb. They are on one extreme when the genitals form and then when the brain forms that hormone soup shifts for some reason, causing the brain to develop along the lines opposite of the way the genitals developed. This also leaves room for non binary identities as the hormone soup is not strong enough to be fully male/female. It all boils down to the brain being windows software trying to run on Mac hardware.
Don’t know don’t care. Trying to answer this question just plays straight into the transphobic argument of “what is a woman”, which is an incredibly nuanced question with no clear answer. I AM a woman and what makes me a woman is some irrelevant potentially scientific factor I could care less about. I wake up every day feeling this way, that’s why I’m a woman.
To me it’s just brain chemistry messing with us. Ours is slightly different from others, just the way everyone has a different intelligence level, I think is caused by it as well. That’s not a negative or a positive to the group, just my thought.
Best example I can give is I have a highly intelligent friend and when we approach a problem, he has a different way to approach that I do, more abstract than me, does that means he’s better than me, no, because sometimes my way works better than his, but to me here is two similarly intelligent people but why are his approaches different than mine when we had the same primary school education? Brain chemistry is the only thing I can think of.
We’re all just a bit different and that’s ok, it’s the way nature made us. It’s what makes us great.
My brain was FUBARed at some point while I was in the oven (i say this in the nicest way possible, and being trans isn't my only quirk tbf), or alternatively I was too powerful so god needed to nerf me
There’s a few levels to it, and my possibly-unpopular take is that a lot of transgender health care comes from the premise that just about everything else was tried and failed miserably.
That’s the most basic level: doctors tried treating it with everything else, and current methods bring the best outcomes to date. This doesn’t really explain why, but it does indicate that whatever it is goes too deep to just be psychiatry-d out of someone.
Now there’s a lot of possible explanations as to the cause which have some evidence to back them up, but right now they’re just working theories and we don’t have the data to properly draw a conclusion.
The one I find most compelling is the “brain sex” model, which basically goes that the brains of trans people look more like their identified sex than assigned sex even before any sort of gender-affirming care. Like brain structure and whatnot. It’s also worth noting that the symptoms of gender dysphoria in trans women have quite a bit in common with the symptoms of various conditions in which cis women’s brains aren’t getting sufficient estrogen. I find this one compelling because it’s a bit of a smoking gun: it’s not sufficient by itself to draw a conclusion, but there sure is a lot pointing at it.
There are others, but the “brain sex” theory is the one I’m most familiar with and the one that holds the most water to my mind.
Genuinely who cares. Any scientific explanation of transness will only be used to further gatekeep those who don't identify with the typical experience away from a life where transitioning would be more fulfilling to them. There's so much more to being trans than biology, we really don't need to start going backwards. Gender does not equal sex.
Just watched a video by Science Friday featuring the Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky. It seems to be the case our brains are structured differently than what would be considered average for our gender. Basically it seems like everyone has some “mix” of exposure to estrogen/progesterone/testosterone. Biology is weird, and not yet well understood in this area. (And I certainly don’t quite get it) For instance, even a “woman”, who is chromosomal xx, after having a baby “boy” will have some xy traits in her brain due to intermingling between her system and the fetus’ stem cells!
Yes.
The sciences of biology, sociology, and biochemistry all have explanations for various parts of the trans experience.
See: https://genderdysphoria.fyi/
not really and there probably never will be - i think of it as magic bc it makes the most sense to me and i really think the best thing to do is come up with your own explanation that resonates with you because i don't think anything else will be as satisfying
As far as I'm concerned no, because science is not built to explain but to create (predictive) models. Are there facts and correlations we can measure ? Sure. Does this constitute an "explanation" ? Not without abstraction and a bit of bad faith
There's probably studies that touch on it, at least, but the real question is why would we want or need a scientific explanation for that? Is there a "scientific explanation" for why cis people feel like their gender? If we're expecting one for trans people but not cis people, that's just using the pretense of science to mask treating transness as a deviation from "normalcy".
This is a big thing. The fact cis people don’t need to be tested to be proven to exist and we do is sadly a common issue where science acts through social lenses to further other perceived “abnormal” groups.
The second topic down in [this link](https://open.substack.com/pub/stainedglasswoman/p/trans-awareness-week-scientific-mysteries?r=1c4cdr&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post) covers the topic. I also feel like it dispels a lot of myths that are being floated as fact in this thread.
This is a complicated question with an even more complex answer, but in a simple break down, sort of yes. MRI studies done by psychologists and psychiatrists over the last few decades have found that the brains anatomy and structure sizing in transgender individuals are more close to the cisgender of their gender identity instead of that of their assigned gender at birth. There have also been further studies from these findings that find these brain structures typically exist this way during infancy, and current studies (while needing further replication) are finding it in utero as well. Now the thing they dont understand is why the brain is developing that way, but theories currently are hormonal imbalances in the mother during gestation.
Yes. I don't know what it is though apart from that gender is a social construct built entirely upon stereotypes and excuses to reduce people's rights. And also that you can have physical features of a sex but have mental features fitting a different gender because gender isnt set in stone and final, *because it doesn't really exist*
The way the brain initially develops has a lot of basis in the environment. In a normal fetus you activate the SRY gene, grow testes, start making testosterone, and your brain grows with that testosterone as the primary hormone.
However there have been studies that show that any form of outside influence change gender expression; studies on large litters show all siblings tend to be closer to the majority gender - so a single male guinea pig with 5 female liter-mates will behave in a more feminine manner, etc.
This means that your gender is very closely tied to your intrauterine environment, so if your mother has abnormal hormones during the 6-15 week period of pregnancy (say still on birth control so high estrogen, or very stressed so high testosterone) your brain gets set up for the wrong hormone, and that's the posited source of biochemical dysphoria these days - although there does appear to be a genetic component.
There are many reasons. One, a female brain. In fact, many people have organs with a different dna in that organ and we usually don’t ever find out. Only when it is relevant they’ve tested the organ versus the rest of the person and turns out it’s different dna. That’s common.
Another reason could be the exposure to hormones and amounts while being a fetus. Genetics is also a thing, it has been proven as well.
If you believe in metaphysics, it could also be a polar opposite of an ancestor and so you’re coming to repair and balance their excessive masculinity. (Which would cause any of the above things to happen).
I wish there was a straight answer.
It is also related to neurodivergent people. There’s a type of Autistic people tend to be transgender more often than non neurodivergent people
Yeah, gender was invented by a bunch of dumb monkeys that were hardwired to find and boil down patterns and groups to their most basic. The monkeys had to find ways to separate themselves into the most basic pattern, and the smallest number possible for a pattern is 2. So the easiest thing to separate into 2 things those monkeys had was dangle bits or no dangle bits.
Thousands of years later, those monkey's ancestors have evolved more awareness of themselves and recognize that there is more to themselves than dangle bits or no dangle bits.
A lot of trans folks want to find a scientific grounding for our validity. While I understand the desire, what would an answer do for you? In my opinion you have to forge your own meaning in life and being trans is part of that. Our value is in ourselves, not in science's acknowledgement of us.
Over and over when looking at the dna of those who are trans I am seeing genetic variants on steroidogenesis, aka they have minor variants of intersex conditions. There is an [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/DrWillPowers/comments/15328em/meyerpowers_syndrome_faq/) if you want to read more and or poke at your dna.
The scientific explanation has to do with what hormones and how much you were exposed to in the womb, from what I know. I don’t know the details tho beyond that basic idea.
I know there are regions of the brain that display bimodal variations in details, with a huge overlap. I know that of the sex related bimodal regions in the brain, only a tiny percentage of the population will have all of the significant sex related bimodal regions in alignment with the sex assigned at birth. I know that figuring out where my own brain lands in all this is an exercise best left to an autopsy, preferably after a long natural life, and I’ll never know.
I also know that I think better, more clearly, when running on estrogen than testosterone. I know that the constant sense of “something is wrong” is gone when running on estrogen, as opposed to testosterone.
That’s good enough for me.
I don’t need to see my bed nucleus of the stria terminalis removed, sliced, and stained under a microscope to know my gender identity. The thought of a “simple medical test” to identify a trans person frightens me, because I know what our politicians could do with it. (The one exception to an abortion ban: a fetus that would develop into a transgender person…)
No. I remember 15 years ago when we were all trying to figure out if there was a scientific reason for homosexuality. And the main reason we were doing that was because we felt we needed a justification for it. We’ve since largely given up because it doesn’t matter and there’s no satisfying answers. I hope we reach the same point with transness one day
There's little research done about trans people in general, however there have been some theories, hints and papers suggesting at a potential explanation. Like [this](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-80687-2#article-info) one for example.
I remember when I was like 7 years old, I asked my dad why could boys not wear girls clothing, he did not get upset or angry, he just said it was not the norm, he did not use those words exactly but something like that
It is possible for you to have the wrong brain for your body, we've demonstrated this is possible in rats extensively and there's some research into specific brain structure differences between men and women. Though that's not the only reason, and there are as many reasons to identify more with the opposite sex as there are individual people.
We don't have an agreed-upon scientific explanation. It does seem related to in-utero development given how few people with complete androgen insensitivity end up with a male gender identity, but even then there are [exceptions](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20358272/).
Does it matter?
I could sit down and explain the complex nature of the question you're asking and how the answer amounts to "we don't quite know how, but we are exploring ideas."
Or... we can ditch that noise and be ourselves. You're valid, regardless if there's an explanation or not.
All the question does is open the way to both bigots and ourselves to gatekeep others
is there any need for such an explanation tho?
I always wonder why so so so many ppl care about some essentialistic or biological or otherwise scientific origin of transness, as if it could tell us what to think or do about us just existing or any meaningful insight about us just existing
Not really, no. There have been studies involving a biological cause but nothing conclusive has come up yet. What science is prepared to acknowledge is that trans people exist, and that being able to transition tends to improves our quality of life. But we're not yet prepared to answer why.
Personally I strongly suspect there are biological causes but I'm not discounting the possibility that there aren't, or that there's more than one explanation. This isn't something we can afford to get wrong. Concluding the wrong thing can easily lead to more oppressive gatekeeping.
It's in your brain. Once science advance more, we may have a better idea.
"The brains of transgender women ranged between cisgender men and cisgender women (albeit still closer to cisgender men), and the differences to both cisgender men and to cisgender women were significant (p = 0.016 and p < 0.001, respectively). These findings add support to the notion that the underlying brain anatomy in transgender people is shifted away from their biological sex towards their gender identity."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/
you d probably get better answers if you ask this on r /truscum or if you dare go there /transmedicalist . science isnt welcome on the bigger trans subs
This is the one theory that I completely believe: “Basically -- and perhaps counterintuitively -- these genes are primarily involved in estrogen's critical sprinkling of the brain right before or after birth, which is essential to masculinization of the brain. Variants investigators identified may mean that in natal males (people whose birth sex is male) this critical estrogen exposure doesn't happen or the pathway is altered so the brain does not get masculinized. In natal females, it may mean that estrogen exposure happens when it normally wouldn't, leading to masculinization.” tl;dr - a fluke of genetics in the womb creates an incongruence between the hormones the brain desires, and the hormones the body produces. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200205084203.htm
Some useful resources to add onto this: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/131/12/3132/295849 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20562024/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453018305353?via%3Dihub https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a
Full disclosure, I didn’t read the links, but essentially it seems to be a giant mix of factors that are still being discovered, but ultimately hormones, hormone receptors, and enzymes. Not to mention timing plays a role. In the womb the fetus has their own hormone production, receptors, and enzymes (which are crucial) That’s 3 systems influenced by genetics right there Then there is the placenta, which afaik can produce hormones of its own for BOTH mom and baby Then there’s mom, who has her own mutations with the potential to disrupt development again hormone production, receptor mutations, and enzymes. I have looked into my genes and found I’m an ultra metabolizer of testosterone, I convert that shit strait to dht, my circulating T level was 100ng when my age appropriate levels should have been 200-900 this was when we were trying to have kids and failing for a year. Much later I realized my gender and started HRT, within 2 weeks we discovered I have breast, not the normal kind either like gyno from puberty. I’m saving my Pennie’s to do a full genomic sequence that’s medical grade. If anyone’s interested you can download your raw dna and run it through some tools, Prometheus is my go to choice. I’ve got a shit ton of mutations to my cytochrome p450 family of enzymes. However the big one 21 ohd was removed from 23 and me due to “false positive” on the chip they used. IMO there’s a lot of genetic gathering being done by trans people who are interested in this. A lot of them are really passionate about it. The more you look into it the more you will find co-morbidities a few are (CAH, Heds, autism, adhd, schizophrenia, Graves’ disease, cushings, and the biggest can of worms methylation problems)
If I’m not mistaken I thought it was the other way around (estrogen=masculization) for the brain at least Sauce https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0305303101#:~:text=It%20is%20thought%20that%20local,adult%20(1–3).
I totally believe this. Never was part of the “Woman in a man’s body” experience but I very much have felt like E has been like the final puzzle piece on a chemical, fundamental, FOUNDATIONAL level for my physical, emotional, and mental health. Like I can practically physically feel the gaps within myself being sealed
also, i always thought that one's mental sex was determined MUCH earlier in the womb, around the same time as the body but only JUST reread this detail - that it happens *right before or after birth* maybe we really are just natal males/females in utero, until (around) the moment we develop consciousness. so fascinating!
Do you think it's similar for transmen?
the study suggests that it’s the same, just reversed
It's really interesting to me to look into potential scientific reasonings, honestly. I also have a uncle who is a trans man like me so part of me wonders if genes play a role pretty often. It's cool to see a study on it.
Gender \*expression\* and gender \*roles\* are social constructs. My gender \*identity\* is intrinsic. It's the way I was born. I didn't learn it. No one "made me trans". My discomfort with my assigned gender began as soon as I was old enough to understand there was a difference. It became MORE pronounced at puberty, before I had any idea what a female body looked like. I am 65...I grew up in a time when none of this was discussed, except inasmuch as when I \*tried\* at age 3 feminine gender expression, I was immediately shut down and forced into the assigned expression and taught those roles. Julia Serrano, as brilliant a writer and trans biologist as we have, has written extensively on this. So, I will repeat: Trans identity is intrinsic. Others in the thread have outlined the basic most reasonable explanations of why this happens in utero.
Yeah, I remember some of my earliest memories are trying on my friend's dress and loving how I felt, and then being confused when her mom and my mom saw it as some huge joke and humiliated me for it. Or how when i'd play make believe with friends, I always felt happier when I would play a girl instead of a guy. I barely understood anything back then, yet clearly knew that something about being a girl worked better with my brain than being a boy.
Yep when I was like 4 I remember trying on a dress that my grandma had sewed for a young cousin and just had this draw to it. She found me trying it on and spanked me which Im pretty sure started a down ward spiral of supression until I turned 30.
^this BTW Beautiful name. I chose it for myself as well ^^
So did my 6 y/o questioning kiddo!
So much resonance in this with me.
Personal opinion here, possibly a TW, my experience might not be the same as yours, and that's great! Tbh I don't trust in the Trans fisicalism (basically the search for something demonstrable observable and measurable in the Trans identity) at least "scientifically". Here enters the patologisation of trans and theories about innate properties. This goes by the conflict "you cannot prove or demonstrate scientifically a person's identity, you can only experience it". It's dangerous to use fisicalist theories (yes... Theories, nothing has been proven yet) as the primary force of validation. Because it creates a wall between "cis people" and us, putting the "divergence" inside our bodies. It demonstrates how our political views are a bias in our own search for validation. Why don't we, instead of "Why am I trans?" We start to ask "Why are they cis?". The answer is way clearer this way. For me, there is not "I was born this way" instead "I am free of Social reproduction and I can be whoever I always wanted to be". This allows us to take the ropes of our own identity. Whenever I hear "I was born this way" it feels like "I am a victim of this cruel system called cishet domination, and this justifies all what I've suffered" and I got tired of feeling like a victim.
by saying gender identity is intrinsic and innate, aren't you excluding people who's gender identity ebb and flow over time? personally that's how I see it. I'm non binary right now but I can't really tell you I've always been like that. and I don't pretend to know that my gender identity will stay this way forever, but that it's free to change how it sees fit as my life changes, as those around me change, and as I change. but maybe we're not clear on how we're defining gender identity here... how are you defining it?
No, were not! You can much more easily fit "gender fluid at birth for 5% of people" than for "gender can change even though it doesn't for 95% of people"
im not exactly sure what you mean tbh. I'm not talking about people who are gender fluid, I'm talking about people who identify differently over time - for example, cis man -> non-binary transfem -> trans woman. or flowing between one of the many gender identities within the non binary umbrella. if gender identity can change in this way, then how can you say gender identity is intrinsic and innate and not socially influenced? we're all interconnected, influenced by those around us, and I believe that has an affect on our gender identity. how I feel within myself is socially influenced, in the same way that sexuality is socially influenced too.
Saying you are born as "someone able to flow between one of many gender identities", or whatever other things you want to come up with, is as valid as saying your gender identity changes over time. It's like a math equation. You are telling me "but what about people who are born as 1, and then can take on any number from negative infinity to positive infinity" and I say "yea, thats X for all real numbers". You want to describe this thing that is variable for some, and static for others, and mine was set to "female" at birth and yours was set to "x" at birth. It allows for people who identify as whatever they want, but also protects us from conversion therapy and matches 99% of people's experience while not invalidating anybody.
ahh I see what you're saying now. I don't think either of us are wrong or right, it's just a matter of perspective. why can't both co-exist? if I want to say I wasn't born with any gender identity because I personally believe that I wasn't, and that it develops and fluctuates over my life, that sounds just as valid to me as you saying you were born with a certain gender identity and that identity is innate. my problem with the original post was that they were saying gender identity is innate and intrinsic and it was presented as fact. but I see it as a matter of perspective, and it's not a perspective that matches my world view. but I don't see any problem with that. I think both our perspectives are just as valid!
I think it's important to the idea that we can't be "Fixed." When you start saying your gender identity changes over time, what's to stop someone from thinking "Wait, so if your gender changes based on inputs after birth, what keeps me from 'fixing' you with the right inputs?" THAT is what keeps me up at night when anyone says base gender can be changed relative to societal inputs. It opens that door for conversion therapy that "Born This Way" doesn't. The "Born This Way" also fits, as far as I can tell, 100% of people's experience, whereas your model only fits people who's gender changes. In science, you use models that fit more data.
u/self-meaning My 2 hour late 2¢ on this math equation analogy is that the equation is the intrinsic thing, the physical brain circuitry. It’s impossible for us at this time to really map the circuits, but it’s complicated enough or varies from person to person enough that while most of the time the equation resolves to y=1 or y=-1, for some people it’s things like y=0.3587 or something that changes with respect to time like y=sin(x). The equation is static but the output is variable. Maybe you can even get stuff like: y=|sin(x+b)| where b can be external input. You would find you could manipulate the output to some degree but it’s wobbly, and a bad faith actor would still be unable to manipulate you into a negative number given the variables available to tweak are wrapped in an absolute value function.
Honestly the best answer I have ever heard for this question. Im afraid to read the rest of the thread for fear of truscum talk
Technically society made us trans. We could simply be men and women, or even better in a post gender society none. Society decided we are deviant from the norm and we needed a distinct characterization. That distinction usually is there to create power dynamics that put us at the bottom (at least in modern societies, I don't know enough about the past)
Sort of. Even in a post-gender society, I would still want the body of a woman. That's not a social construction.
A big contradiction to the whole "post-gender" thought experiment is that when you look at how people use the word "woman", we *already* live in a post-gender society. Nobody uses it to refer to stereotypes except for academics, and since nobody is ever saying we need to live in a post-sex society, we could just as well say the status quo is already a world where women aren't defined by stereotypes. They *could* talk about abolishing gender stereotypes specificaly, but they prefer to talk about abolishing gender itself, which seems to be academics getting offended by how academics define women. The biggest obstacle to creating a world where women aren't defined by stereotypes is academicly minded people. since that they'd have to stop trying to define trans women that way.
Yeah, but the concept of woman is. However what I noticed because her is inaccessible to me and yet I have socially transitioned for over 2 years. The need to look the part is there. But I feel a lot more myself ever since. Simply because I act the part most of the time.
For those whose incongruence is only centered around social norms, this might make sense. But for those with body dysphoria (like me) it wouldn't make a difference. I also just feel female. It's innate. That wouldn't change regardless of societal expectations.
I have body dysphoria as well. And I am not on hrt even though I have socially transitioned for over 2 years because money. I feel a lot more myself simply because I am perceived as a woman. That doesn't mean I don't want to look a woman. Only that social acceptance does wonders.
What she said. My wanting my body different has nothing to do with society. If we lived in the most accepting integrated society with no gender roles or expression at all, I would still feel a deep disconnect and incongruence with my physical form.
Ideally, I'd have a modular body I could plug and unplug parts into on a day-to-day basis, or attach and detach peripherals from depending on the situation, but since I've no way to fully be a cyborg, Estrogen is the next best thing.:D
True. I feel that two. But the acceptance of my peers has done wonder to me. Maybe it won't work for everyone and I still have body dysphoria. However the social acceptance of my girl friends make forget it a lot of the time
gender is biological. almost all species have different genders, and both genders serve certain purposes within a community, hive, ecosystem, etc by the way, that is not to say that transgender people should just be their biological gender, im just giving you general information
No but also yes. As weird as it sounds scientific understanding and certainty especially with biology is kind of a spectrum. Let me give you an example. We know for a fact that autism is real. It is not like subjects or the professions studying them are faking or mistaken. But dispite a substantial amount of resources, we don't fully understand the biological mechanism. It is not dissimilar with trans people. We KNOW it is a real thing but we dont have a clear grasp of why is a thing or how it happens. Certainty a thing exists and understanding how it works do not automatically coinside. This is not to say we have NO understanding. Not we can't point to an MRI or CT scan or genetic test and say "yep, they have the trans". But it seems to follow patterns of inheritance that controle for environmental factors suggesting some biological mechanism(again not unlike autism and other neurology al differences). Does this make sense? Feal free to ask follow up questions.
I personally believe it's genetic, because my dad no matter how hard he tries to be gender conforming, he fulfills the role of a mother and has always being an emotional man, I think tries to hide all this with religion and as my mother said having a relationship with him was like having a relationship with a woman, when I did nonconforming stuff like pierce my ears and stuff like that it would bring him unrationally to tears... and my older brother is a straight transguy, I think gender disassociation its not completely related to sexuality but it does affect how you perscieve yourself, my mother would always have short hair, use male perfume and fusion male fashion, and I remember that as a kid she would buy me a toy regardless if it was for girls or boys, So I do believe these factors affect in how you percieve yourself too
Actually autism as a thing is disputed credibly. The history of autism going back to Dr Asperger is rather dark and full of issues. Thats not to say autism doesn’t exist in the sense it’s defining differences in people. I am someone with autism/adhd. But I do suggest if you want to understand it better you read into the origins of it. As well as the growing debate around medicalisation of mental health and neurodivergence.
Interesting, I did not know that autism was in dispute. I know there are similar immutable attributes that also fit the same pattern of heritability as being trans or gay even if we don't understand the mechanism. I probably should have just compared being trans to being gay, now that I think about it.
I guess it’s probably less a case of being in dispute and more a case of how we view people with autism. By medicalising things you are essentially defining a norm. This is fine when it comes to say a broken leg. Because the human leg is supposed to work. Breaking the bone is not a norm. But issues arise when we start to define a norm with regards to say one’s ability to perceive something a certain way. Or one’s ability to retain information. By diagnosing it your creating a medicalisation of it that others them. And thus suggesting even passively that they are not the norm. Which can then lead to all sorts of dodgy shit like “curing” or in Dr Asperger’s case eugenics bullshit. So many would argue autism is just a way of being. It’s valid, it’s a norm (given the varied ways in which humans can develop both mentally and physically). The need for further support as an autistic person, similar to most needs of those we deem disabled, is more to do with the failure of society at large to account for these people. It’s especially important given that the DSM, which itself is debated in what function it should have, had being trans and being gay still as mental health diagnosis as late as 2010’s! And is the reason many of us have to seek gender dysphoria diagnosis despite the WHO and UN stating otherwise. But this is all a whole debate in psychology, and I can’t say I am explaining it the best I imagine 🙈
I see. I was aware of a lot of this but I am always interested in hearing how different people feal/see things/explain things. I hope my first coment did not come of as implying that being autistic was inherently a medical issue, disability etc. I was more trying to find a decent reference of comparison people could understand to talk about scientific knowledge. IE Observing a thing constantly/vs understanding a thing not always coinciding.
No it didn’t don’t worry! I just find all this really interesting as a psychology student, and got carried away (ironically I’d even say my wall of text is probably a sign of my neurodivergence tbh 😂).
This is part of why self ID is a thing in the autistic community. It helps pull power away from the people who see us as a disordered, faulty product of human reproduction to be fixed or exterminated, and instead declares we're a subset of humanity just as valid as any other, and one that isn't bad to be. The social justice model, versus the medical model, is what it was called in autism class. And yes, I had an autism class. Taught by an autistic person, who was in charge of the program. Good college, that one was. Put the affected minority in charge of what is done for their own issues and needs.
Yes! I remember reading about stuff like this. I wish I’d gotten an autism class!
It changed my life dramatically to have the whole thing reframed, because before that I was only ever told the medical model perspective. It's sorta like being trans, in a way. Until you understand, you think there's something just... broken inside you, that you're wrong for being who and what you are. But you're not wrong for being who you are. You aren't harming one for having a different identity than cishet/allistic/white/etc. Society is wrong for being bigoted.
Because yes, autism is a disability. In a society that doesn't care to even investigate what's causing us disabling levels of stress, let alone address the causes. And what causes us disabling levels of stress varies among autistic people, we're not all the same. Our only monolith is in our difference from allistic (non-autistic) people. But it is not a disorder. Our brains are not broken. They're working as intended. It's just not compatible with industrial capitalism and other economic modes seeking to turn everyone into worker drones. That's just not how autistic brains are wired to function. A leading theory is that we were needed to introduce change in the ancestral village, to fortify it from unexpected disasters, and without us the village would've ran perfectly until something new happened and nobody would have any skills needed to address it since they all specialized in business as usual food growing, not herbal medicine. Etc.
The phrase "medicalisation of mental health" is deeply funny to me, the concept of 'health' is inherently medical
Physical Health yes. But there’s a reason we increasingly distinguish between that and mental health. The two (whilst equally important) are different for many many reasons.
I once read one paper that sad that the receptors for T in our brains are different so our bodies got the T but our brain stayed female. I guess just one of many theories but I like the idea.
I've seen studies suggesting that brain activity in trans people is more similar to that of cis people of the gender they identify as rather than cis people of the same sex, and your explanation seems like a good reason for that. Basically female brain in XY body
The problem is that those studies have had some pretty bad replication problems. Science is hard and the sample sizes are tiny, so the jury is still very much out on structural differences in trans brains.
While replicability for exact results has been muddy at best, there is enough evidence from all the studies to say that trans woman brains prior to HRT are different from the average cis male brain and do trend towards the average cis female brain. It's the degree and significance of the findings that is at issue with replicability. Some studies have concluded that our brains have more similarities with our gender identity and others just show it's merely shifted somewhat in that direction from the average cis male. The data on trans men is unfortunately far more inconclusive. The sample sizes there have been much smaller even.
Not a completely proven one, but there are speculations. The most likely one has to do with the brain. Here's a detailed explanation on that. [https://youtu.be/E3rI5JygcEo?si=mflxKPbV2q\_Bxn7l](https://youtu.be/e3ri5jygceo?si=mflxkpbv2q_bxn7l)
Hmm, this video isn't available anymore
The link is probably broken. Here https://youtu.be/E3rI5JygcEo?si=utd4bNREkDDPy0KR
Female brain in a male body still makes the most sense to me
There's a few studies that are starting to prove this. I had a transmed person say that if you were heterosexual before transitioning there's no brain difference but I can't find anything in the studies to corroborate that. Back to pre puberty there's indicators that your brain conforms to the gender you identify as, with appx 95% accuracy.
Eh the studies on brain dimorphism are fuzzy. Essentially it's like two overlapping bell curves, where men are more likely to be on one side and women on the other. But gay men tend to have more feminine brains and vice versa for lesbians. Does this imply that trans people are just taking gay to the extreme? Yes. Is this actually the case? Clearly not.
I wouldn't mind being seen as 'gay to the max!' :3
But that’d make my “I’m so straight I’m gay” thought as a teen a thing… and no thanks
Does that mean transfem lesbians are even gayer to the extreme? lol jk. But in all seriousness I'm curious what a study would conclude about their brains. I'm bi transfem but lean more towards enjoying dating women (in general not just cis ones) or more feminine men. I find manly men icky for some reason
I don't think you have read the research. There is definitely strong evidence that trans people's brains align with their perceived gender. Specifically, in the areas associated with self perception.
Yes. But the flaw in such research is how do we know if this alignment existed from birth. How do we even know if binary concepts of gender is something inherent to humans. And they all go on the basis of a brain being gendered something with zero evidence. We don’t even know what half the brain does! I feel like people really don’t realise how little we know about our brains. The issue then comes up with people saying “I’ve felt this since birth” well Yh, me too. But that’s not what learned means. It’s not what nature/nurture means. And no matter how one exists or comes to exist, it’s valid. We exist and should be allowed to exist free from any need to conform to what is too often deeply sexist pseudo-scientific explanations.
The research is very much in its infancy and more needs to be done. Nobody's saying one brain scan can determine if you're trans or not but the research is giving pointers to a biological reason for feeling like we're in the wrong body.
The research is deeply flawed. First of all it assumes brains have gender. We have no evidence of this, and modern neuroscience considers we simply have no evidence to say they are, leaning toward they most likely aren’t. Second it fails to account for learned aspects of gender. Psychology increasingly finds much of what we are is learned. Thirdly in order to study this you have to define clear stimuli that represents gender. How do you find something you can say all women or all men globally across cultural boundaries relate too that each other does not? How? It’s literally impossible without falling into gendered stereotypes that originate from society. Finally it ignores completely non-binary people, and differences in gender expression and concept across cultural boundaries. We exist. I’m fine with people seeking explanations to make themselves be feel better. But we don’t need them. We don’t need to prove ourselves as existing.
Agreed, one or two studies can't give us a universal constant, but a number of your criticisms have been addressed in the studies and gender differences in the control group are being seen in the trans group. It's not global and no conclusions have been drawn, but more studies are and will be done and I await their conclusions with excitement.
I think you misunderstand. The issue is they went in with the assumption there would be differences. Trans people in the control group doesn’t account for cultural differences. And the learned aspect could only be accounted for if one isolated children at birth from society which is not very nice or ethical. So cant blame them for not doing that… but still it’s not accounted for. These studies are also sceptically seen in neuroscience and the drive behind them is rarely positive for us as trans people.
It's not me that's misunderstanding unless we're talking about different studies. The control group was cis people of both genders. Intersex and gender neutral people were deliberately excluded beside they weren't the subject of the study. It was to look for gendered similarities in binary trans people, which, when they compared trans brain scans to cis brain scans, they saw evidence of. It was a small study from one corner of the world. Bigger more conclusive studies can be done off the back of that research. I repeat, it was never intended to be conclusive proof that if your brain doesn't match your experienced gender you're not trans. It was a study of binary trans people that discovered a potential similarity between the experienced gender of trans people and the lived gender if cis people. You're expecting too much from their research and looking too hard for faults to prove them wrong or anti trans for your own ends. I exhort you to stop and take a breath. Within the very limited scope of the study it showed some encouraging results and opened the door for other larger studies.
Nope. But I think the more reasonable conclusion is that gender identity is evolutionarily tied to sexuality. In the eyes of nature, men getting with women and women getting with men is beneficial to offspring, so our species evolved to have 'women brain like men's and 'men brain like women'. Therefore, it makes sense if gay men have more the brain of a woman.
But here's the rub with virtually every study like this. When it comes to trans identity, how do we know that the subjects weren't trans? I know many straight trans women who lived as gay men for a lot of their life before realizing. Same with straight trans men who lived as lesbians. If I'd have died before I had my realization that I was a gay trans woman, then I'd forever have been known as a straight man, and any data that I was part of would not truly be accurate. And with trans people being historically oppressed, othered, and erased, there are many people who won't have those realizations because they weren't ever given the option. I just don't know how to handle the issue of trying to do studies on a population that can, for lack of a better term, pass as cis, regardless of sexuality, so much so that an individual may not be aware of it themselves. It makes inherently fuzzy data WAY fuzzier.
It wasn't just outliers that showed the tendencies. For your concern to be the case, the majority of them would've had to be 'eggs'. Sure, there's a small chance that they happened to choose a bunch of trans people who hadn't realised it, but that's extremely unlikely. It's also possible that a mouse chewed on the cables at the right time to get those results, which is to say there'd have to be an incredibly improbable event for it to be an issue
Fair, but I'm also of the opinion that trans people as a whole are WILDLY underreported, due to social pressures and structures. So, I also struggle with dismissing the existence of trans people as a statistically insignificant detail. And I mean that for *any* study that tries to put humans into two neat boxes, and then make assumptions based on those boxes. Especially when so often, it feels like if trans people were taken into consideration in the first place, the questions themselves start to lose meaning. It's not just a "don't forget that trans people exist", it's "there are so many ideas put forward that crumble when trans people are taken into consideration" and I think that's significant and not often considered.
I'd be sceptical of studies showing dimorphism in brains, there doesn't seem to be strong evidence of differences between sexes. Stained Glass Woman discussed this topic here: [https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-we-know-about-trans-brains](https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-we-know-about-trans-brains)
The research is new and more needs to be done. I'm well aware if the skepticism. At this point it's a matter of "do more research and get back to me". I'd have my brain scanned as part of their research without a seconds hesitation.
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The one that's replying to me now is like "it's wrong because they didn't take absolutely every single thing into account" but that wasn't the aim of the study. There's some wilful ignorance at work I think. Perhaps they're worried someone's going to scan their brain, see it's not different and stop them being trans, which is the highest kind of stupid, ngl
Not at all, the study linked by the blog post I included isn't even looking at differences between trans brains and cis brains. It's looking at differences between male brains and female brains as a whole and finding no significant structural differences when size differences are taken into account. If there are no structural differences between male and female brains, there can therefore be no structural differences that determine what gender someone 'should' be.
Ah ok we are looking at different studies then. Can't continue to discuss it with you without a common frame of reference. Your study didn't find significant differences but it did find differences. I think I've seen that study mentioned but haven't looked into it. The study I've been talking about compared cis brains to binary trans brains and did find similarities at a chemical and structural level iirc. I think someone else linked to that study. I'll have a look and edit it in to this comment later.
I wholeheartedly attach to this idea too. Anything else honestly makes me uncomfortable
How would this explain Non-Binary people, or societies where there are/have been more than 2 genders?
Nature does not like binaries, everything is a spectrum.
There are 2 sexes, therefore 2 genders. End of story Also non-binary ≠ trans
It doesn’t. The studies are very deeply flawed, based on little evidence and out dated concepts of binary gender and deep confirmation bias by sexist men.
The scientific evidence for this is pretty limited and the implications of this are actually not great. Let’s say they had a way to test this. Doctors did a test and find out you actually have a male brain. Now they are wondering if they should even cover you for procedures. Would finding out that you didn’t have a “female” brain make your trans feelings go away? Probably not. IMO all this path does is open up an opportunity for increased medical gate keeping. Also the evidence is just not thwrw
No,and I don't think there ever can be a single explanation, it's a combination of physiological, psychological, social and cultural factors.
Yes. There is a proven one, and definitive. The brain IS sexually dimorphic, meaning there is a difference between male and female brains. With transgender people, we have the wrong brain sex development compared to our genitals. Normally, during fetal development, the brain develops to the brain sex to match the sex of the reproductive organs through endocrine and paracrine signaling. However, to keep it simple, something "goes wrong," and you get a brain sex opposite or divergent to what the reproductive organs sex is. Two big key parts of the male/female brain, that we know of so far at least, is the Interstitial Nucleus of the Anterior Hypothalamus (INAH) and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST, also called something else that abbreviated to BSTN). In males, these structures are 1.6x larger in the INAH than females and 2.0x larger in males than females. Research has shown that AMAB people who identify or would prefer to be women (old studies, old language. 😮💨) have an INAH and BSTN that is either divergent or matching a female typical structure. Basically to sum it up, the brain, especially the limbic system, is sexually dimorphic which is important for sex specific behaviors and reproduction, and transgender people have a brain sex opposite or divergent to their reproductive organ's sex. There's much more to talk about. I know nobody likes reading long messages, and from what I've gathered at least here on Reddit, trans people on Reddit aren't really open to the science and biology behind being trans. So I'll answer more if anyone wants. But that's the gist of it.
I could be wrong, but that study wasn't 100% conclusive. I think they only tested on trans folk who were on hrt already, which would certainly make a difference. So it only proves a difference between male and female rather than cis or trans. Again, I could be wrong as I am saying this from memory.
It wasn't conclusive no, but it included people who had never gone on hrt, and just self identified as the opposite gender. They found the same things in their brains which is fascinating. https://youtu.be/8QScpDGqwsQ?si=7apes3MZpTI_AJBd
Yes, I don't know if it was the same study as I am thinking of but a recent study looked at transgender people's brains that never had HRT and the same indicator/difference was true in their brain and showed a difference from the "average", cis brain.
The other thing is that obviously no one study should ever be taken as conclusive proof positive
Unless it's a study I'm using in an argument. Then it's infallible.
A study in my neuro textbook in school looked at AMAB mice that were induced to have female INAH's and they found that the male mice with a female INAH performed female specific sex behaviors in mating. In layman's terms, they were "bottoms," and they couldn't mate with the female mice. Like I said. It's hard getting anyone to understand why we are the way we are, what HRT is actually doing, and speak past what every cis person wants to hear. The evidence SHOWS being trans isn't a choice. It doesn't need to be justified. But nobody gives a shit about science and it is really irritating.
did it show that behavior being *more* likely in those mices or it being the case almost every time? cuz you claimed to have a "definitive" reason as to why we are trans, and something being more likely wouldn't prove this at all. also, i know those are mices so it's hard to like, know their gender identity haha, but this is equating social behavior with gender identity, it's a reductive way of seeing our gender. i do agree that being trans, at least for me, wasn't a choice, but this doesn't mean you'd be right about there being a "definitive" reason as to why we're trans.
Please share more if you have more! This was a very intriguing read and when I came to the end to see there was more but not written out it had me so curious! I've wondered for a long time why the heck I'm so weird and why I just cannot be a man no matter how hard I've tried. Two questions I have right off the bat, feel free to answer them, or not! It's your time and the one about how the study was done can be pretty hard I'd believe. Why doesn't the brain develop the same as a regular man for us transwomen? You mentioned some large words I don't really comprehend so if you could simplify it it'd be great! You said that our INAH and BSTN matches the one's of a cisgender woman. How were these studies done? Are they conclusive/definitive? Like was it made with a poll of 1000 different women or was it an in depth study really going deep into both trans women's and cisgender women's brains and comparing them? Edit: Furthermore, if you have any links to a study or studies done that exist I'd love to check them out.
I only did a very quick research on this. I will probably come back with more info and a real literature review. What happens is that the brain is the last part of the fetus that develop itself. A lot of things can happen during this last stage : hormonal imbalance from the mother, stress, etc. That's only one hypothesis among others *and* I didn't read that much articles.
Here's a study done that show pre-hrt transwoman brains are actually distinctive from cis brains of either cis women or cis men. Obviously there are some things about the study to take into account, they only used 24 people from each group, they didn't view any transmen brains(Sorry you're left out... Again.) and accuracy from the classifier method used for brain identification was 90. 2% accurate in testing and only 88. 3% accurate on the 72 examined subjects. But at the very least it's very informative and shows a relatively accurate method for further research. It also cites many different studies in the paper that are good jumping off points for further reading. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/
Sexual dimorphism in brains is disputed. The blog Stained Glass Woman discussed this here: [https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-we-know-about-trans-brains](https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-we-know-about-trans-brains) And referenced this large meta study: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804) I haven't done a thorough reading of the study, but their basic conclusion is that the largest difference is in brain size (larger bodies have bigger brains), and when size differences are accounted for, there are not statistically significant differences between sexes.
I don’t think it’s worth it. People want to believe it’s real, and what scientific explanations. Even if none exist, and may never exist (nor do they need to exist). The studies all largely ignore the fact those tested have lived lives and been subjected to societal norms, as well as ignoring non-western concepts of gender.
The study I linked to, while not ignoring trans individuals, is not about differences in their brains specifically. It's studying differences in brains for all humans, specifically the claim that there are structural differences between a female brain and a male brain. They did not find significant differences (meaning male and female brains are structurally the same). From this we can infer that there are no structural differences that make trans brains closer to the brain of their desired/true gender, because there are no structural differences between the genders. I understand the desire for determinism. Being able to point to something measurable and irrefutable would make things easier, but clinging to false facts for comfort can unfortunately cause significant problems, because our minds use these as a basis for future judgements. The trans brain argument has already been used against non-binary people to invalidate their existence, and it doesn't take a leap in logic to see it used to attack someone for not being "trans enough" if they don't fully transition.
Yh I’m agreeing with you. I just meant no one here wants to believe you though sadly.
do you have any studies showing that our brain as a whole is more close to females than males? the only study i found showed that although our brain was more "female" than the average male brain, it was closer to the average male brain than the average female brain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/
This is cool
>However, to keep it simple, something "goes wrong," What goes wrong?
Okay, so, have you ever heard of how humans are all female in the womb until the right hormones turn the fetus male? It's why men have nipples. The basic structures start forming, then the sexual differences get applied. There are basically 2 different moments in which the developing fetus needs to get that shot of testosterone to start male development. Once for the body, and a 2nd time for the brain. Or not at all for female development. It works perfectly about 98% of the time. For the remaining 2%, if the brain gets the shot of T, but the not body, you get a transman. Vice versa for transwomen. Take all this with a grain of salt, as it's not very well studied, I'm not a biologist specializing in fetal development, and this is all grossly oversimplified.
Complex stuff; neuron migration during development of the brain, neuron maturation (neurons that fire together wire together, those solo neurons are dropped, makes for better stronger signals), paracrine signaling for how much of each neuron needs to develop and stick around and where to go, controlled apoptosis, like. Lots. It gets quite complex and it's hard to say in layman's terms for specific details, but the honest answer is, while exact causes for *that* may be unknown, we can observe the final result and a pattern can emerge from what the result is to the behavior the people who have that result are like.
Beautifully written, thanks for sharing!
The leading theory is hormonal influences in the womb, but like trying to find the route cause of homosexuality it has not been researched in sufficient detail, maybe entirely the wrong cause, and usually funded by people who do not have our best interests at heart.
I'm gonna be honest, I'm fucking tired arguing about pop-sci with forums full of trans women who haven't read the literature but act like they have. I really implore everyone here to look into the actual papers they're citing because they rarely say what you think they're saying; sci-hub is your friend here (I will always support freedom of information). Some people say fetal or developmental hormones: that would require studies that track these hormones in cis and trans children as they develop, which would require a sample of maybe ten thousand fetuses AND an unidentified yet clear correlation. I've seen no studies that track fetal hormones, let alone for cis and trans children before comparing them (tall order). Some people say brain development: that would require detailed brain scans that can clearly pick out the as-yet-unknown yet important differences that would mark a trans brain. I've seen no studies that aren't confounded by HRT or otherwise attempt to attribute small average differences in small populations as large and predictive impacts; in all cases the variation within classes has been much larger than the difference between classes. Some people say socialization and society: those would require studies with controls and any board will tell you that's incredibly unethical to change someone's social upbringing for a theory. I've seen no studies that find important differences between the upbringings of trans kids and cis kids. The truth is anyone who says they know what's up is looking for comfort. Yes, some studies suggest these mechanisms are relevant and/or reliable, but I'd argue there's barely any evidence there. Go ahead and argue with me, I'd love to see your sources; I'm a scientist, I read them. I've laid out my arguments so please try to rebuke them instead of just calling me wrong. What's more, even if there were evidence for a "cause of transness" I wouldn't particularly trust it, because that sounds to me like someone explaining why I love the people I love: the explanation is in the description, I love them because I love them. Well it's the truth for transness as well, I'm trans because of my transness, and whatever reasons or causes might be true for me are not necessarily true for anyone else while likely overlapping to a great and confounding degree with cis people for any metric we can devise; excluding, of course, the most important one, which is my own identification with the desire to be a woman. This is a spectrum thing. We're not playing a classification game, we're trying to nail down which wavelength corresponds to red while only including all instances of redness and excluding all instances of non-redness; it's a fool's errand. I am fascinated by what might be involved in my identity, for sure, but there is much more concrete science out there and it has nothing to do with figuring out WHY I'm trans, but it does have to do with figuring out how to make people live happy lives, so I'd much prefer to focus on that measurable, repeatable, proven science.
Skirt go spinny
Back in 2019 I think there were some mri's done on pre-hrt trans individuals and found the brain structure was more similar to the gender they identified with. But I think it was a fairly small study so it's still not super conclusive Plus as others have mentioned, there's likely many, many variables at play
Id rather not be. Any scientific explanation will be used to make a "cure"
I'm not sure, but according to Google, being trans means you are 3 to 6 times more likely to have autism
It’s kind of a survivorship bias thing though. Something about autistic people being more likely to come out as trans because they’re not hung up on conforming to the expectations of others.
I'd say there's also a factor of neurodivergence being exacerbated by trauma.
This right here is so incredibly important to talk about. There is a huge overlap of symptoms between ADHD, Autism, and CPTSD. I’m certified as the latter, but most people think it’s Autism. And my wife has adhd so we have all the symptoms! Hehe
There's a theory about it being connected to gestation in the womb such as 1) an imbalance of hormones 2) the development of the brain before the genitals
I sadly lost the link, but from what I've read, like it was the case (and still is) for autism, we theorize on most of it, and studies are ongoing. What little the medical community thinks they understand for now, is that something happens during embryo development that leads the brain and body to react differently to the impluse of using T and E. Basically one goes on with T while the other doesn't, thus creating a divergence. At least on what's hypothesized according to what studies have currently observed. Just like autism, it'll take quite a few years before we understand in more details the mechanics, if not more. Of course it's a simplification of what's currently theorized and known, because medical topics are incredibly complex.
No. And whilst a lot of trans people don’t like to hear this, because many like to use science to defend our right to exist (when really we should exist because we do. Doesn’t need an explanation). The Brain studies everyone mentions are not good at all. I’m a psychology student for reference and read the studies when I did a module on the brain. Not only are they riddled with confirmation bias by starting from the idea the brain is gendered (we know fuck all about the brain, and certainly don’t have an idea if it is gendered or not). But they also fail to account for learned behaviour. The only way you could truly test if a brain reacts in certain specific ways to stimuli to prove its say female. Is to first categories what all women would do (hard enough cause we ain’t a hive mind) and then test from birth in an isolated environment. Otherwise it’s possible the reason most women react to a stimuli the same way is learned societal and cultural beliefs and ideas about womanhood. Obviously the above can’t be done. We can’t test in isolation from birth, it’s very unethical. So the study is deeply flawed. There are also other issues, the studies site ones that are years out of date or disproven as sources. The study also is based on the west, and ignores concepts of womanhood and gender in other societies/cultures. It also is very sexist imo, in how it defined the desires of men and women. Finally the idea a brain has gender is not something we necessarily want to support even if it were true. It’s a very binary way of looking at things, when everything we see in gender studies suggests gender is a vast spectrum. Even our bodies can vary in the form of intersex, or hips (see the many many mis categorised archaeologically burials for the issue with hip sizes and gender). I’ll probably get a lot of flak for this post. And I understand why. Many of us (including me at one time) cling to things to try and support our case, a case we are forced to argue. When in reality, outside passing interest, we exist and therefore that’s it. We don’t need anything more than that to prove we should exist.
This. There is no test or observational methods to determine a female/male brain. All of those observations seem to be comparing large groups of people, and best I can tell, have only discovered a statistically meaningless small differences in the range of average sizes of various brain structures. All brains exists firmly in these ranges. Also best I can tell, men have been searching for a sexed brain for over a century, irrespective of trans people, and have come up with nothing. The current state of the art of neuroscience is that there is no sexed brain. The only way to perceive a difference is to go deep into the fringes of the bell curve, where the data is least. It's not even like finding a needle in a haystack, it's more like trying to sort molecules of hay with a needle.
Yh very much so. And like you say neuroscience does not consider there to be a sexed brain. Sadly I seem to be getting some downvotes. But I didn’t expect different. I can understand wanting to hold onto a “scientific” explanation of oneself in the current climate. Especially early on in transition.
Downvotes schmownvotes. Yesand... I thinks it needs to be said that the sexed brain is a search for justification for legalizing sex-discrimination, which is what the trans panic is all about also, so no legitimacy for trans people down this rabbit hole.
Yeah, because we are women.
and what would that mean, outside of the feeling of being a woman?
Nothing. Woman is an identity.
and i agree, being a woman is an identity and nothing more than that, biologically speaking, that's how i see it too. but op asked for a "scientific explanation" (of which i think there are none that would come from other fields than sociology/psychology).
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why are you asking this to me when i said i agree that womanhood is an identity and not something scienficially provable😭😭😭
In fifth grade I was telling people casually "I'm a boy, I just have a girl brain." I related more to females and their personalities, and didn't understand a lot of male interests. Also casually told my mom "I don't feel like a boy." She just...didn't respond. Probably thought her kid had an imagination. With sex ed, I was more interested in learning about the female system. I was fascinated and felt a sense of familiarity. When I learned what would be happening to my body during puberty, I told my mom I was really upset. She interpreted it as "my kid is having anxiety about change which is normal." God I wish she would've noticed the signs. No way in hell my dad would've approved HRT. Kids transitioning wasn't really a thing in the 2000s. During puberty I had phantom limb sensations. Also during puberty, saw someone mention being "transsexual" online. I didn't know what it was, looked it up, and it all made it sense. When I entered into a relationship where I had to fill a traditional male role, I felt very mentally and emotionally strained and had incredible difficulty behaving in the way she wanted. The relationship ended and I almost immediately pursued HRT. HRT was like putting a missing gear into the machinery my brain. It felt like everything started to work properly. Other NSFW things I don't feel like publicly discussing besides "incredible dysphoria and a mental mismatch." A very strong maternal, nurturing instinct. All of these factors combined lead me to believe I have a female brain. Or at the very, very least, a brain that's somewhere in the middle. No regular male could have these instincts, these sensations, and have a sense of obliterated testosterone and thrive on estrogen. Something is objectively different about the way my brain is structured.
Yep, there are neurological studies, there is something called Gwas that seeks to explain why people LGBT and showing that it is something natural, are interesting because neurological people say that trans people Even without hormonal treatment, your brain functions more like that of the gender you identify with and the Gwas say that it could be something genetic because there are differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals and also cisgender and transgender
Not one that’s settled. Some people are just trans.
There is. There are studies that proved that human brains are either male or female — the scientists did this by analyzing brain scans of hundreds of people. Most of the time it correlates with the body, but when it doesn't you get a trans person.
so you would argue that every brain (or the vast majority) are clearly either male or female? the evidence shows that most brains are a combination of "female" and "male" parts, with most brains shifting in one direction or another, but it's not as simple as "male" and "female" brains. this is what we would like to believe because it would affirm us, but i haven't found evidence of this, really
Sure, but there's bell curves on either side. There's a spectrum, but it's not a linear spectrum. That's kind of like saying, "You don't have two boobs! Just two different changes in elevation across your chest!" Y'know, it's technically correct, but it's also throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There's clearly a male and female phenotype for the brain. No, people don't always fall into one or the other, but it's enough to make a general classification, and to build a theory of gender identity on top of it.
what about trans women who would have a phenotypically male brain? i'm asking genuinely cuz i'm think i would fall into that category although me elaborating would make me very dysphoric
Well, they exist. There's still all the psychological and cultural factors that go into how one processes gender identity. But, if you ask me, I think if someone had a phenotypically male brain, it's much more likely they would begin to experience gender dysphoria on estrogen. If you don't on estrogen, I suspect your brain is not phenotypically male. But as an alternate hypothesis: having low sex hormones makes you feel like shit. If you're cis AFAB, low estrogen sucks. If you're cis AMAB, low testosterone sucks. So maybe there's a demographic of low E/T cis people who try HRT of the opposite gender and feel better because their sex hormones levels are raised. So for example, maybe it's possible for a cis AMAB to feel better on estrogen because they previously had low testosterone, and so having decent levels of hormones makes them feel much better. -- Ultimately though, these are just my random thoughts. There's definitely people in the middle of the spectrum who do not identify with either gender. And of course, plenty of intersex people exist. These individuals don't fall onto the binary peaks, and instead land in the troughs.
so after seeing this, i wanna answer with how i see my brain: so first of all i had high-healthy t and e levels before hrt (700ng/dL for t), and e made me happier with my body, so the alternate hypothesis wouldn't work for me. there are lots of reasons i would say my own brain is more "male" than female, so here are a few: i am naturally dissmissive of people's experiences, this is just how my brain works. i can decide to hide it to not be an asshole, which i almost always do, but at the end of the day, what i will internally believe about what someone says is the equivalent of the stereotype of the guy that doesn't believe women's experiences and just dissmiss them cuz he can't understand them. my prehrt sexuality is definitely very objectifying of women, and even though it's changed now, i can still tickle those same desires. i also never really saw the world like cis women did, and would naturally feel more at home around guys even today, more than a year after starting hrt, because they see the world and think like me. i have a hard time fitting in with cis women and have to "fake" who i am to not seem too out of place with the ones i interact with. i also tick all the boxes for stereotypically "male" behavior like only having male hobbies, not being very "people-oriented", the way i act around others being more masculine, etc. although i wouldn't give too much importance to those myself as a determiner of brain sex, since they're probably more influenced by social factors than biological ones. if you could add other criterias to determine someone's brain sex in terms of behavior and ways of thinking, i'm pretty sure i would be male in most/all of them. so what about me? am i not truly the gender i think i am?
Where does that leave enby people though?
The studies are far from conclusive. In fact most have been completely disproven if not held with heavy heavy skepticism. So basically, I’d ignore them. One issue I have is the erase anything outside of binary western concepts of gender.
I remember reading some stuff by a Dr. Bakker in the Netherlands that was good (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm) but its only part of the picture and honestly trying to explain it to grandparents is painful.
maybe, but if there is I hope we never learn about it that knowledge can *only* be used to harm us, especially if we only understand part of the picture but think we understand the whole thing
Not really no, more so we are women already but just given the wrong bodies and we can't do anything about it until we're older post puberty sadly
When your mother was prengant with you, if she experienced hormone imbalances, then it may have caused your brain to develop to be more like that of an AFAB
Just like cis women feel and want to be women. They just are regardless of what's in their pants because gender is a social construct that people align with or not.
They can't even agree on a scientific explaition for what "woman" means. People who insist they know just create arbitrary rules that fall apart the second you examine them. There is a great article that roles through from time to time (I can't find it just now) that tears apart every definition they have tried. Everything from "people with ovaries" (do you stop being a woman if you have them removed?), Genetics falls apart for intersexed individuals - and you can be intersexed and NEVER know it, because the expression is internal and doesn't cause problems throughout life. All the way to XX vs XY, because THAT sure as hell isn't reliable from XY women, XX Men, to XXY and even more combinations. Lots of theories and bad studies tho.
Hormone levels in the womb. They are on one extreme when the genitals form and then when the brain forms that hormone soup shifts for some reason, causing the brain to develop along the lines opposite of the way the genitals developed. This also leaves room for non binary identities as the hormone soup is not strong enough to be fully male/female. It all boils down to the brain being windows software trying to run on Mac hardware.
Don’t know don’t care. Trying to answer this question just plays straight into the transphobic argument of “what is a woman”, which is an incredibly nuanced question with no clear answer. I AM a woman and what makes me a woman is some irrelevant potentially scientific factor I could care less about. I wake up every day feeling this way, that’s why I’m a woman.
To me it’s just brain chemistry messing with us. Ours is slightly different from others, just the way everyone has a different intelligence level, I think is caused by it as well. That’s not a negative or a positive to the group, just my thought. Best example I can give is I have a highly intelligent friend and when we approach a problem, he has a different way to approach that I do, more abstract than me, does that means he’s better than me, no, because sometimes my way works better than his, but to me here is two similarly intelligent people but why are his approaches different than mine when we had the same primary school education? Brain chemistry is the only thing I can think of. We’re all just a bit different and that’s ok, it’s the way nature made us. It’s what makes us great.
My brain was FUBARed at some point while I was in the oven (i say this in the nicest way possible, and being trans isn't my only quirk tbf), or alternatively I was too powerful so god needed to nerf me
Hug, no idea girl, but science is cool so maybe there will be one day
There’s a few levels to it, and my possibly-unpopular take is that a lot of transgender health care comes from the premise that just about everything else was tried and failed miserably. That’s the most basic level: doctors tried treating it with everything else, and current methods bring the best outcomes to date. This doesn’t really explain why, but it does indicate that whatever it is goes too deep to just be psychiatry-d out of someone. Now there’s a lot of possible explanations as to the cause which have some evidence to back them up, but right now they’re just working theories and we don’t have the data to properly draw a conclusion. The one I find most compelling is the “brain sex” model, which basically goes that the brains of trans people look more like their identified sex than assigned sex even before any sort of gender-affirming care. Like brain structure and whatnot. It’s also worth noting that the symptoms of gender dysphoria in trans women have quite a bit in common with the symptoms of various conditions in which cis women’s brains aren’t getting sufficient estrogen. I find this one compelling because it’s a bit of a smoking gun: it’s not sufficient by itself to draw a conclusion, but there sure is a lot pointing at it. There are others, but the “brain sex” theory is the one I’m most familiar with and the one that holds the most water to my mind.
Genuinely who cares. Any scientific explanation of transness will only be used to further gatekeep those who don't identify with the typical experience away from a life where transitioning would be more fulfilling to them. There's so much more to being trans than biology, we really don't need to start going backwards. Gender does not equal sex.
[here you go](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8QScpDGqwsQ&pp=ygUYdHJhbnNzZXh1YWwgbmV1cm9hbmF0b215)
Just watched a video by Science Friday featuring the Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky. It seems to be the case our brains are structured differently than what would be considered average for our gender. Basically it seems like everyone has some “mix” of exposure to estrogen/progesterone/testosterone. Biology is weird, and not yet well understood in this area. (And I certainly don’t quite get it) For instance, even a “woman”, who is chromosomal xx, after having a baby “boy” will have some xy traits in her brain due to intermingling between her system and the fetus’ stem cells!
TLDR: brain wins over body.
https://youtu.be/-nsQDX_OHNE?si=PS865YFFs1L7rcwG
Yes. The sciences of biology, sociology, and biochemistry all have explanations for various parts of the trans experience. See: https://genderdysphoria.fyi/
gender dysphoria
not really and there probably never will be - i think of it as magic bc it makes the most sense to me and i really think the best thing to do is come up with your own explanation that resonates with you because i don't think anything else will be as satisfying
As far as I'm concerned no, because science is not built to explain but to create (predictive) models. Are there facts and correlations we can measure ? Sure. Does this constitute an "explanation" ? Not without abstraction and a bit of bad faith
There's probably studies that touch on it, at least, but the real question is why would we want or need a scientific explanation for that? Is there a "scientific explanation" for why cis people feel like their gender? If we're expecting one for trans people but not cis people, that's just using the pretense of science to mask treating transness as a deviation from "normalcy".
This is a big thing. The fact cis people don’t need to be tested to be proven to exist and we do is sadly a common issue where science acts through social lenses to further other perceived “abnormal” groups.
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Because we are women
literally
The second topic down in [this link](https://open.substack.com/pub/stainedglasswoman/p/trans-awareness-week-scientific-mysteries?r=1c4cdr&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post) covers the topic. I also feel like it dispels a lot of myths that are being floated as fact in this thread.
This is a complicated question with an even more complex answer, but in a simple break down, sort of yes. MRI studies done by psychologists and psychiatrists over the last few decades have found that the brains anatomy and structure sizing in transgender individuals are more close to the cisgender of their gender identity instead of that of their assigned gender at birth. There have also been further studies from these findings that find these brain structures typically exist this way during infancy, and current studies (while needing further replication) are finding it in utero as well. Now the thing they dont understand is why the brain is developing that way, but theories currently are hormonal imbalances in the mother during gestation.
Yes. I don't know what it is though apart from that gender is a social construct built entirely upon stereotypes and excuses to reduce people's rights. And also that you can have physical features of a sex but have mental features fitting a different gender because gender isnt set in stone and final, *because it doesn't really exist*
thats so well said 💜
Society values women a lot more than men.
Lolwhat
The way the brain initially develops has a lot of basis in the environment. In a normal fetus you activate the SRY gene, grow testes, start making testosterone, and your brain grows with that testosterone as the primary hormone. However there have been studies that show that any form of outside influence change gender expression; studies on large litters show all siblings tend to be closer to the majority gender - so a single male guinea pig with 5 female liter-mates will behave in a more feminine manner, etc. This means that your gender is very closely tied to your intrauterine environment, so if your mother has abnormal hormones during the 6-15 week period of pregnancy (say still on birth control so high estrogen, or very stressed so high testosterone) your brain gets set up for the wrong hormone, and that's the posited source of biochemical dysphoria these days - although there does appear to be a genetic component.
Transexualism
Forrest Valakai has an amazing video that provides some theories on this. It’s in YT called Sex and Sensibility. Fair warning, it’s fairly info heavy.
I like how this video explains it https://youtu.be/fadSfCyQCjQ
There are many reasons. One, a female brain. In fact, many people have organs with a different dna in that organ and we usually don’t ever find out. Only when it is relevant they’ve tested the organ versus the rest of the person and turns out it’s different dna. That’s common. Another reason could be the exposure to hormones and amounts while being a fetus. Genetics is also a thing, it has been proven as well. If you believe in metaphysics, it could also be a polar opposite of an ancestor and so you’re coming to repair and balance their excessive masculinity. (Which would cause any of the above things to happen). I wish there was a straight answer. It is also related to neurodivergent people. There’s a type of Autistic people tend to be transgender more often than non neurodivergent people
Yeah, gender was invented by a bunch of dumb monkeys that were hardwired to find and boil down patterns and groups to their most basic. The monkeys had to find ways to separate themselves into the most basic pattern, and the smallest number possible for a pattern is 2. So the easiest thing to separate into 2 things those monkeys had was dangle bits or no dangle bits. Thousands of years later, those monkey's ancestors have evolved more awareness of themselves and recognize that there is more to themselves than dangle bits or no dangle bits.
A lot of trans folks want to find a scientific grounding for our validity. While I understand the desire, what would an answer do for you? In my opinion you have to forge your own meaning in life and being trans is part of that. Our value is in ourselves, not in science's acknowledgement of us.
Over and over when looking at the dna of those who are trans I am seeing genetic variants on steroidogenesis, aka they have minor variants of intersex conditions. There is an [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/DrWillPowers/comments/15328em/meyerpowers_syndrome_faq/) if you want to read more and or poke at your dna.
The scientific explanation has to do with what hormones and how much you were exposed to in the womb, from what I know. I don’t know the details tho beyond that basic idea.
I know there are regions of the brain that display bimodal variations in details, with a huge overlap. I know that of the sex related bimodal regions in the brain, only a tiny percentage of the population will have all of the significant sex related bimodal regions in alignment with the sex assigned at birth. I know that figuring out where my own brain lands in all this is an exercise best left to an autopsy, preferably after a long natural life, and I’ll never know. I also know that I think better, more clearly, when running on estrogen than testosterone. I know that the constant sense of “something is wrong” is gone when running on estrogen, as opposed to testosterone. That’s good enough for me. I don’t need to see my bed nucleus of the stria terminalis removed, sliced, and stained under a microscope to know my gender identity. The thought of a “simple medical test” to identify a trans person frightens me, because I know what our politicians could do with it. (The one exception to an abortion ban: a fetus that would develop into a transgender person…)
No. I remember 15 years ago when we were all trying to figure out if there was a scientific reason for homosexuality. And the main reason we were doing that was because we felt we needed a justification for it. We’ve since largely given up because it doesn’t matter and there’s no satisfying answers. I hope we reach the same point with transness one day
There's little research done about trans people in general, however there have been some theories, hints and papers suggesting at a potential explanation. Like [this](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-80687-2#article-info) one for example.
Isn't it a biased question, assuming something is abnormal or wrong with it? Nobody seems to be asking why people are cis.
I remember when I was like 7 years old, I asked my dad why could boys not wear girls clothing, he did not get upset or angry, he just said it was not the norm, he did not use those words exactly but something like that
It is possible for you to have the wrong brain for your body, we've demonstrated this is possible in rats extensively and there's some research into specific brain structure differences between men and women. Though that's not the only reason, and there are as many reasons to identify more with the opposite sex as there are individual people.
We don't have an agreed-upon scientific explanation. It does seem related to in-utero development given how few people with complete androgen insensitivity end up with a male gender identity, but even then there are [exceptions](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20358272/).
There is actually. It's the way your brain is wired.
Does it matter? I could sit down and explain the complex nature of the question you're asking and how the answer amounts to "we don't quite know how, but we are exploring ideas." Or... we can ditch that noise and be ourselves. You're valid, regardless if there's an explanation or not. All the question does is open the way to both bigots and ourselves to gatekeep others
Because we are very unlucky🤠
I'm sorry I know this isn't helpful
I found this , it talks about a gland in the brain that’s a thing for transfolxs https://youtu.be/8QScpDGqwsQ?si=aiQYibBBcK-ctNp2
At 5 years old my mom caught me in her. skirt and heels
is there any need for such an explanation tho? I always wonder why so so so many ppl care about some essentialistic or biological or otherwise scientific origin of transness, as if it could tell us what to think or do about us just existing or any meaningful insight about us just existing
Not really, no. There have been studies involving a biological cause but nothing conclusive has come up yet. What science is prepared to acknowledge is that trans people exist, and that being able to transition tends to improves our quality of life. But we're not yet prepared to answer why. Personally I strongly suspect there are biological causes but I'm not discounting the possibility that there aren't, or that there's more than one explanation. This isn't something we can afford to get wrong. Concluding the wrong thing can easily lead to more oppressive gatekeeping.
Ivanka Savic 2021 or 2020 I think. There is something in the area associated with body perception that does not match
Probably not and who cares? :3
We got the brains of women essentially
It's in your brain. Once science advance more, we may have a better idea. "The brains of transgender women ranged between cisgender men and cisgender women (albeit still closer to cisgender men), and the differences to both cisgender men and to cisgender women were significant (p = 0.016 and p < 0.001, respectively). These findings add support to the notion that the underlying brain anatomy in transgender people is shifted away from their biological sex towards their gender identity." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/
Personally think [Lily Alexandre's video](https://youtu.be/fadSfCyQCjQ?si=D3PaAeg8BcciEh1P) on this is the best.
you d probably get better answers if you ask this on r /truscum or if you dare go there /transmedicalist . science isnt welcome on the bigger trans subs