Natural Selection And Transsexualism

[Guest DisDwarf]

Thinking in biology terms, I wonder, does transsexualism in any way increase the survival fitness of the individual or the society as a whole?

At first it seems as if transsexualism would have a negative impact on the probability of you passing your genes: we're at higher danger of committing suicide, being killed by transphobic people, or living at the margin of society. Plus, finding a mate is often more difficult.

But, could there be advantages in being transsexual as well? Advantages that could allow one to more easily pass their genes (biological fitness) or help the children of others grow? (societal fitness)

For example I read somewhere that some biologists think that homosexual individuals can be very useful for their societies by helping the children of other people grow up (and now thanks to technology and other arrangements and same-sex marriage recognition it's possible for lesbians and gays to have their own kids too). An I would how natural selection and transsexualism could relate if at all.

[Guest cjnoble71]

I'm not sure if being homosexual or transsexual are necessarily adaptive in the terms of the individual but I wonder if there is a built in mechanism for each if a species reaches a certain population density has been reached. I know there are plenty of examples of homosexual behavior in other species, does anyone know if their are any examples of transsexual animals besides us good old homo sapiens?

[Guest April63]

I don't see how transsexuals would have any chance of being better in regards to natural selection. The confusion and mating problems are one, but if you take hormone sand surgery, you can't have children at all. I just don't see how transsexualism could survive in a natural selection scenario.

[Guest Steven22]

In anthropology an organisms' "fitness" is based on reproductive success. So the more you reproduce the more your genes get spread around the more "fit" you are. Natural Selection works off this basis.

(Biological Anthropology)

With that being said, in an ideal environment, where transsexuals are allowed be themselves at the earliest of ages, most of us would never reproduce because we would voluntarily remove our ability to reproduce. Not saying we are worthless but from a natural selection point of view we are not "fit". Might I add, by reproducing we are risking passing w/e predisposition there to our offspring. On the other hand, it may not be something that can be passed on, it might be a completely random protein miss coding during meiosis before conception or mitosis after conception. Not saying it is but we don't know. There are so many place where development can go wrong we take it for-granted that it doesn't.

[Guest April63]

In anthropology an organisms' "fitness" is based on reproductive success. So the more you reproduce the more your genes get spread around the more "fit" you are. Natural Selection works off this basis.

(Biological Anthropology)

With that being said, in an ideal environment, where transsexuals are allowed be themselves at the earliest of ages, most of us would never reproduce because we would voluntarily remove our ability to reproduce. Not saying we are worthless but from a natural selection point of view we are not "fit". Might I add, by reproducing we are risking passing w/e predisposition there to our offspring. On the other hand, it may not be something that can be passed on, it might be a completely random protein miss coding during meiosis before conception or mitosis after conception. Not saying it is but we don't know. There are so many place where development can go wrong we take it for-granted that it doesn't.

That's what I was trying to say. According to natural selection, this just isn't viable.

[Shannonline]

I've known from a young age that I would never have children It was something that just didn't interest me.. I never had those feelings. So when ever I hear of natural selection it doesn't effect me as it is something I don't hold importance on. I understand how others can though.. but to me it just seems such a basic, instinctual, pre-programmed and simple way to live. There is more to life than reproduction and choosing a partner with those parameters in mind seems so animal like.

I guess I view a lot of the general public like that, unconscious baboons that fight, watch TV, work and have babies.

Maybe I'm just jealous. OR trying to justify being who I am in a religious world that judges us on whether we function on that level.

I don't think we add anything by having less ability, from what I've heard there are a lot of people that don't feel comfortable with having a TSs around their children let alone talking to them or touching them. But for those that do I don't see why we couldn't mother a child just as well as any other female. We do develop those maternal feelings just like any other women so. Which kind of scares me with having the opinions that I have had for so long to then possibly have them challenged internally eek! But I'll take it as it comes. Then I may come back and post something completely different lol.

[Guest julia_d]

Natural selection.. a lot of that is pure luck.

More to the point is the way evolution works. It tries things out and the changes that work tend to survive better than the changes which don't. Obviously there are variations in all species.. always has been and always will be. These seem to be driven somewhat by environmental factors but may be just random slight errors in the genetic coding from one generation to the next.

Reptiles show a remarkable response to the temperature the eggs are exposed to during the formation of the embryo.. some species producing predominantly male or female offspring with a variation of maybe only 1 or 2 C ..

Now is transness a survival trait? .. from a species point of view maybe not, but most species do show a small percentage of intersex variants every generation. As evolution works by genetic change from generation to generation (it must otherwise we would all be algae) then some of the changes are capable of reproduction and others are not. Obviously it takes a certain set of genes to make any living organism, and the mixing will throw up the odd non viable or dual fertile offspring.

We are a small community for a good reason. The genetic differences which make us are from obviously generally dormant gene pairs which must be rare. Many of us do have children before we transition and this ensures the continuation of our particular genetic map. Somewhere back in our ancestry.. maybe a million years ago.. there was a transgendered person. We may all be descended from the one individual. I have looked at research that shows that the (outside africa) human gene pool all comes from perhaps as few as 4000 definite individuals. Every species starts from somewhere and at some point there was one individual who suddenly was "homo sapien" and we are the offspring of that one mutation.

Luck, natural selection and random genetic mixing is what life is all about. We are only here because something ended dinosaurs, and they were only here because millions of years earlier something else wiped out 99% of all life that went before.. pure luck. 99.99% of all species that have ever existed are extinct. We aren't so special and we will one day become extinct just as everything else that has gone before us has. Humans are rather new.. compared to a shark or a crocodile or a frog or a horseshoe crab.. but we share way way back a common ancestor.. a bacteria which evolved to join up with other bacteria because it needed to just to survive.

Interested? .. look how closely we are related in our reproductive methods (at a microscopic level) to a tree or a snail. Plants animals fungi and virus .. the 4 types of life.. 4 different modifications of the same basic concept of passing genes from one generation to the next. There have been mutations which have worked, and mutations which haven't, but that doesn't stop life continuing to try these options created by chance.

Why are there more cases now than before.. interesting concept.. there are more humans than ever before and we have spent 200 years tampering with man made chemicals and pollutants and embarked on poisoning our environment. Research.. why are there a lot of intersex people (and animals I might add) in south east asia? .. what was agent orange.. oh yes.. 17-beta .. a man made synthetic chemical that acts as a fake estrogen.. It is very close in makeup to the pills we are given now.. synthetic estrogens, not the naturally sourced older ones... and we pumped it into the environment without thought about what it could do genetically.

That chemical gets into the food chain, and we eat food from around the world.. so did our parents. Other fake estrogens have been used as pesticides. They don't directly kill insects but maybe making all the offspring infertile or not capable of developing to a destructive adult form (by messing up their life processes) the same result is achieved. What is going on with the honey bee? .. I remember research a few years ago that GM rapeseed pollen was directly toxic to bees. One news report about the findings while there was an argument about allowing outside trials of the "new wonder crop" and that was that .. It's been hidden, but I think I know what is going on.. We tamper with genetic engineering at our peril, because we don't know what we are doing. One little change can be all it takes to make us as a species extinct.. and we have no idea what that plant or animal or bacteria might be that is crucial to our species survival......

[Guest Camicochan]

I don't know that you can say that transsexualism is genetic, or entirely genetic. There have been studies that suggest that certain hormones in the womb can trigger or fail to trigger, affecting brain development. In a subforum there's a topic with a link showing the effects of HRT on brain structures. It seems completely plausible that deeper, more primal brain structures could be affected in the womb contrary to chromosomes and then become inaccessible to later hormones e.g. puberty. I mean in the end know one knows. But if that were the case, the evolution argument would be moot.

[Guest Ryles_D]

Same thing has been asked about asexuality.

Overall- natural selection has stopped acting on humans, so I don't give it much thought. Also, some transsexuals do want kids. I know a couple for whom losing fertility is a real concern, and my partner and I (both transgendered) plan on having a kid of our own one day. So being trans doesn't destroy the chances of having kids- it just lessens them.

[Shannonline]

I looked into storing sperm before HRT but the cost was staggering!!! 0_0 ..that cost on top of everything else just wasn't feasible. I understand why it costs so much it's just not convenient for those (TSs) that would benefit from it. It's a shame you can't store a whole heap and just sell it off slowly to cover the costs.. eewww did I just say that? Ok scrap that last sentence >_<

[Guest Elizabeth K]

Well

This is not in the Spirituality system - so I take a bit of a risk of attack here.

I believe we are made transsexual for a reason. GOD knows what? (pun intended).

I suspect it is to produce extremely intelligent people! We have to be very smart to survive. That has value.

Plus - we are empathetic to others because we live through so much derision and prejudice with our condition - we become well informed about others (those without gender dysphoria) who are shunned by society. That ability for empathy make us available for supporting people. A bad example? I am well aware how to help suicidal people, because I have been there!

Finally - our duality. This makes us literally both sexes. We combine a unique knowledge and have insight others can never have. Native Americans knew this. Some Eastern Societies know this.

Egotistical way of thinking? hummmm.... GOD GAVE US EGOS AS A SURVIVAL MECHANISM.

And I DID have my children - I have three - one has a masters of computer engineering (an electrical engineering spin-off) - one has a Masters of Psychology - the other her PhD in Psychology. They are intelligent on their own - but I think my duality in raising them paid big benefits!

Who knows! The joke - transsexuallity (and homosexuallity) may be Mother Nature's was of overcoming overpopulation. I think we are unique - and we are the diversity that keeps humanity on the right track! I mean the Catholic Church prohibiits its stauchest believers (Priests and Nuns) from marrying. I could never understand that logic! So how do TS people pass on their genes? Like me - too scared to transition! The light went on AFTER I had my children!

So there you are!

Lizzy

[Guest DisDwarf]

Who knows, perhaps nature "wants" to create a third sex and we transsexuals&intersex are just the champions!

The idea that those transsexual people who manage to pass their genes must be very smart to do it is very interesting. True, a transsexual has to enter into relationships and have children before transitioning and take care of them after transition. But now with technology we can also store sperm, or even donate sperm for other couples to use! (yeah I think donating sperm is also a viable reproduction strategy)

[Guest ricka]

I am going to chime in with Lizzy's comments that we were made who we are for a reason and a purpose that at least in history played out in the fact that we held distinctive and useful roles in the overall fabric of society. It has only been relatively recently and in Western Society that we lost our place, due primarily to the threat we had become to the absolute power of the Church and its pervading influence on culture(s). I won't go into this here but the fact that we don't reproduce made us useful in the matrix of a given society. I will give you a snapshot of our role in Native American culture(s) which were primarily hunter/gatherer societies: As "two-spirits" (a term I prefer to the French word "berdache") we were physically able to endure the physical rigors of long hunting trips (and often because we were not pregnant or "on our moon" as natal women.) We did the womens work of keeping up the hunting camps, skinning and preparing game that had been caught and providing a sexual outlet for male hunters who were often gone from their women for weeks at a time. We often functioned as nurses/doctors to the sick and wounded and in societies which observed segragation of the sexes in daily life, such as the Lakota, we functioned as go-betweens.

Ricka