Question about why i'm transgender

[Guest]

my gender therapist said to me that i'm a MTF transgender because of the way my mother treated me when I was a baby.

does that make sense? is it a valid explanation?

the more I think about it, the less sense it makes to me. My mother is very introverted and I just did not have the type of relationship my therapist said I had....

is there a web page that talk about that type of explanation?

[Guest TracieV3]

my gender therapist said to me that i'm a MTF transgender because of the way my mother treated me when I was a baby.

does that make sense? is it a valid explanation?

the more I think about it, the less sense it makes to me. My mother is very introverted and I just did not have the type of relationship my therapist said I had....

is there a web page that talk about that type of explanation?

Actually, research points to that it is inborn.

Mental gender in the brain develops early in fetal development. If the baby has a testosterone wash, their brain becomes male. Without it, the baby's brain becomes female. Then, much later the sexual organs develop.

The theory is that the testosterone wash, or that there of, or partial wash, is the reason for transgendered, and while transgendered people run the spectrum, from crossdressers, to genderfluid, to transsexuals.

[Guest]

Everything I've heard points to a prenatal condition, and nothing to do with circumstances after birth. I don't have a specific link to information. Hopefully others might have that.

Love, Megan

[Drea]

Maybe, maybe not. I am not particularly invested in any beliefs and I certainly can see parental influence come into play.

I feel the important point is...where you are now, what matters the cause than what you can realistically do to address it.

[Guest]

Maybe, maybe not. I am not particularly invested in any beliefs and I certainly can see parental influence come into play.

I feel the important point is...where you are how, what matters the cause than what you can realistically do to address it.

yeah, you are absolutelly right... off all the way i've heard to explain it none change the way to address it

[Charlize]

I really don't know why i'm where i am. perhaps i should care but i've read so many theories and "scientific" research pointing in opposite directions that i've dropped the subject. Perhaps another reason i have given up on the whys is because if i dwell on the whys it makes me worry more. I don't need that at this point of my life and am content to leave that to those who study rather than live their lives. Worthy i'm sure but not for me.

Hugs,

Charlize

[Guest ashleynikole]

LizMarie should be along soon with the proof that exists in scientific, medical, and psychological research. I believe she has her finger on the pulse of more of the documentation that has collected over the decades trying to figure out "how or why" we happen. I can't honestly say one way or the other, but my own personal research has me gravitating on the side of genetics, in-utero development, and other factors outside of parental upbringing. I am transgender and my 5 yr old daughter may be as well (not to mention that her mother is gay). If that's not a case for genetic possibility, I don't know what is.

I'd be weary of a therapist who is only on the side of parental upbringing as there is evidence to suggest largely medical influence.

God bless

Ashley

[Guest Mickey]

The proof is linked in one of our lovely mods signature. I've bookmarked ths site for just such an occasion as this.

http://media01.commpartners.com/AMA/sexual_identity_jan_2011/index.html

That's it. And she explains everything.

[Guest Jamie61]

I know that for me , I just felt it, inside. And the limited members of my family that I have come out to, or have outed me to others... well about half of them think its nurture. This crowd is hung up in the past, as they probe for a reason. Fortunately a few do live in the present and they seem to be more understanding and concerned and interested in my future. That feels nice.

I believe that transition MTF is my alignment to true nature. Don't know what the science says, but this is my gut, my heart and my head. I feel alive for the first time in decades.

Take care and trust you!

Love,

Jamie

To thine own self be true

[Flint]

I'm always dwelling on the same question. Unlike some others here who have been able to let it go (thats probably a good thing) i just can't seem to. It drives me insane. But when anyone does know for sure.... let me know... or don't..maybe i don't wanna know the answer...

This is the thing i fear the answer while wanting an answer in case it's all 'mental' because then....well then i don't know how to respond to that.

[Guest LizMarie]

See my signature or the link CarlaMichelle provides.

In addition, on my blog I have dozens upon dozens of links to brain studies that indicate, at least for the vast majority (maybe not all but the vast majority) of trans people are the way they are due to in utero hormonal conditions especially during the 8th to 16th weeks of pregnancy.

I cannot link that here because there is content on my blog that does not meet the criteria for posting here at LP.

[Guest]

My simple answer, soliloque, is that I was born Trans*.

I was not taught to be Trans*.

No. I can not prove this, nor can anyone disprove this.

Huggs,

Joann

[Guest NeutraLee]

I wonder about this too, as I'm a bit of a behavioral science nerd. The prenatal explanation makes perfect sense to me. But just because there's a solid prenatal explanation, that doesn't mean there can't be environmental influences too. Most of what we are is at least partially influenced by both, for some people, on average.

Maybe for one person it's basically 100% prenatal, but for someone else, it's 60% prenatal and 40% environmental. For example, maybe someone has the genetics and prenatal environment to put them somewhere close to the center of the gender spectrum, and certain experiences pushed them even farther over from the center -- farther in either direction. Most traits and characteristics of people come from some sort of combination of nature and nurture, with each side having more or less influence depending on the trait or characteristic or whatever it is we're talking about.

My own experience, for what it's worth: For me (FTM-ish androgynous), I wasn't a super tomboy as a kid. I was dressed super girly, but that was my mother's choice, not mine. I remember just kind of going with it, whatever, not caring much either way, or doing what was expected of me. Most of my interests were in the centre too. For example, I was no more attracted to dolls than I was to cars - yuck on both counts. For me, monkeys were the in thing. So, that sounds pretty androgynous from the beginning. But I also experienced extreme sex/gender confusing parenting. I was parented as a female, but sexually abused by my father. How did that affect my development? Who knows, but surely it didn't have NO effect at all. How could it not?

Bottom line, though, does it really matter? We need to be who we are now. That's how I'm trying to look at it, instead of stressing out about whether or not I'm still "broken" because of my early experience, which would only stress me out.

I find it odd that a gender therapist would say this. I wonder whether s/he is saying this just to try to push you to think about it a bit, to challenge you on it. Could it be?

[Guest Zayden]

I think that there are a lot of different dynamics and influences to it. How you're treated as a child, your hormone levels, etc.

I think that a lot of these things played a role in how I came to be.

[Guest Sarah23510]

I think that there are a lot of different dynamics and influences to it. How you're treated as a child, your hormone levels, etc.

I think that a lot of these things played a role in how I came to be.

I agree. Like many things there are probably "nature and nurture" components. For me, I just remember wanting girl things at a very young age. I don't remember my mother treating me like a girl, in fact just the opposite when she found me going "girl things." Over time the feeling that I was really a girl got very strong, again with no noticeable family influence but then were submerged for a long time. The fact they remain and always come back seems to point me in the direction of a "nature" basis somewhere in my brain.

[Guest Mickey]

There is only the fact that we are born the way we are. Nothing that has happened to us after birth can makes us trans*. Things that happen to us can allow this trans* feelings to rise to the surface. But we are born either cis-gender,or trans* and there is nothing that can change that. And the medical science shows this. I'll provide the link, again. http://media01.commpartners.com/AMA/sexual_identity_jan_2011/index.html

[Guest Sarah23510]

There is only the fact that we are born the way we are. Nothing that has happened to us after birth can makes us trans*. Things that happen to us can allow this trans* feelings to rise to the surface. But we are born either cis-gender,or trans* and there is nothing that can change that. And the medical science shows this. I'll provide the link, again. http://media01.commpartners.com/AMA/sexual_identity_jan_2011/index.html

Well said...you say it much better than I did...it is our "nature".. the 'nurture" component allows the true self to come to the surface (or perhaps not).

[Guest Mickey]

It was the nurture part that had me trying to suppress who I really was for so many years. I am so glad I finally got passed that. lol When I learned this, that we are born this way, everything else fell into place for me. I dug into the Bible to see what it would have for me with this new knowledge and it was amazing. When I say everything fell into place, I do mean EVERYTHING. I know why I was born trans* and I know what my mission in life is now. Everything is perfectly now and life is grand.

[Guest LizMarie]

Carla has it exactly right. You are or are not trans biologically.

Additionally, after those critical white matter brain structures form, based on hormonal levels, subsequent changes in hormones will not change those structures. Once they are set, they are set. So all the testosterone in the world for 54 years afterward couldn't alter what my brain already felt because of how it is structured. (And turning off testosterone and adding estrogen has been one of the most calming and happy things about HRT for me!)

[Guest devida]

I wonder whether your therapist wasn't just offering a storyline to help you feel comfortable. Personally I prefer a biological explanation. But some people prefer to trace their present issues to events in their past, particularly their childhood. That feels more likely to them because it has to do with their own remembered experience. It doesn't sound like that is true for you. Therapists, after all, are just trying to help you feel comfortable with yourself in an honest and authentic way. Does that require for you assigning a cause to the way you feel today? If it does, fine, if it doesn't why be concerned? Unless I am dealing with a repetitive and negative pattern of behavior that I just don't understand I find assigning causes only useful in satisfying my intellectual curiosity. But I did have to go through a number of years complaining about the way my parents treated me before I realized that that didn't actually help me in my day to day happiness. I expect this is true for most people who had less than wonderful parents. Maybe your therapist doesn't think you have complained enough!

[Guest HughE]

my gender therapist said to me that i'm a MTF transgender because of the way my mother treated me when I was a baby.

does that make sense? is it a valid explanation?

the more I think about it, the less sense it makes to me. My mother is very introverted and I just did not have the type of relationship my therapist said I had....

is there a web page that talk about that type of explanation?

I'm hesitant to say that your therapist is definitely wrong, because people are such complex and diverse beings that there's bound to be an exception to every rule. However, there's a great deal of evidence pointing to gender identity being something that you're born with, and transsexuality being a type of intersex condition, except one where the main thing affected is the brain rather than the genitals. For a long time though, the prevailing view was that people are born "gender neutral", and that the way your gender identity develops depends on whether people treat you as a boy or girl during your infancy and chilhood. That gender neutrality theory has since been comprehensively debunked, and in fact there's quite a tragic story surrounding it, which you can read here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20090331071817/http://www.infocirc.org/rollston.htm

If you're interested in the science behind how gender identity forms, it's through the same process that determines wether your genitals develop as male or female - male development is driven by the action of androgenic hormones (primarily testosterone and DHT), and if there aren't any androgenic hormones present (or something prevents them from doing their job), development occurs as female instead. The same process drives sexual development of the genitals and the brain, although they occur at different times during the pregnancy. Genital development takes place relatively early in the pregnancy (in humans, the critical period is from about 7 to 13 weeks after conception), whereas the brain development that determines what your gender identity will be later in life seems to mainly happen during the second half of the pregnancy. The result is, if something messes up your hormones during the second half of your mother's pregnancy with you, there won't be much effect on your genitals or your physical appearance later in life, however your gender identity could end up not matching your physical sex.

There's a paper I found quite recently, which is fairly readable as scientific papers go, and explains the history behind the discovery that it's hormones and not genes that determine which sex you develop as. The paper is about research on Rhesus monkeys, where female monkeys were produced that had undergone varying degrees of male development through being exposed to testosterone and/or DHT in the womb. It seems like they produced the equivalent of FTM monkeys in some of the experiments, while in others they produced monkeys with male genitals but whose brains remained female.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3146061/

[Guest LizMarie]

I would add that the hormonal explanation also fits a lot of available human evidence, especially DES babies from the post-WWII period. DES binds to certain sex receptors preventing the sex hormones from binding in that place but did not provide the same chemical benefits as the sex hormones. As a result DES babies had statistically notable higher incidences of being gay, lesbian, trans, and intersex as the hormonal exposures didn't align the way they should have.

The in utero hormonal explanation has a rather large body of scientific evidence behind it now. They have found XY females who are fertile, who have conceived and given birth. They have found XXY (Klinefelter's) females after decades of assuming that all XXY babies were male. (That assumption was made because XXY males have various medical issues that become obvious but XXY females are apparently perfectly healthy so nobody looked for them until recently!) And there are XX males, with the de la Chapelle mutation where the SRY gene is bonded to an X chromosome instead of a Y and then sometimes (not always apparently) expresses itself resulting in XX males.

Genes are just blueprints, not destiny. Hormones are the builders implementing the blueprints, and like any new house being built, sometimes there are shortcuts and/or changes made to the original blueprints during constructions.

[Guest Cyndysub]

I am chronically late to the party again and I will go with with what devida said. I believe that if one spends too much time peering thru the microscope that you will miss all of the beautiful roses of life.

[Guest HughE]

I would add that the hormonal explanation also fits a lot of available human evidence, especially DES babies from the post-WWII period. DES binds to certain sex receptors preventing the sex hormones from binding in that place but did not provide the same chemical benefits as the sex hormones. As a result DES babies had statistically notable higher incidences of being gay, lesbian, trans, and intersex as the hormonal exposures didn't align the way they should have.

Agreed, however I think the gender bending effects are from DES shutting down testosterone production rather than by interfering with estrogen receptors. It's an extremely powerful chemical castration agent. Here's a page I found recently talking about DES as used for treatment of prostate cancer:

http://www.hrpca.org/estrogens.htm

"There is an abundance of information indicating that 5 mg is too high a dose given the side effects and that lower doses have similar efficacy against prostate cancer with a lower toxic profile. The 5mg/day dose results in castrate levels of testosterone as does the 3mg/day dose. A dose of 1mg/day is not sufficient to reduce serum testosterone to castrate levels in all patients. "

When you put that next to the doses used in the standard "Smith and Smith" regimen for prevention of miscarriage, you can see that it's virtually inevitable that testosterone production in a male fetus will be suppressed, particularly during the later stages of the pregnancy:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/des-diethylstilbestrol-info/the-smith-and-smith-regime-for-des/772596339433054

If anyone doesn't have a facebook account and can't see that table, it shows that the starting dose for miscarriage prevention was 5mg per day, progressively increased as the pregnancy continued so that by 20 weeks it had reached 50mg per day, and by week 35 of the pregnancy was 125mg per day.

Extraordinary as it sounds, millions of pregnant women were given that treatment. In her book "DES Voices: From Anger to Action", DES mother and author Pat Cody gives a figure of 5 million for the number of mothers given DES (although I've seen elsewhere that that might just be the figure for the US, and worldwide it could be as many as 10 million). In her book, Pat gave an estimate of 2 to 3 million "DES daughters" born who'd been exposed to DES in the womb, and an equal number of DES sons.

From the monkey research I linked to earlier, we can see that exposing a genetic female fetus to testosterone during the second half of her prenatal development causes her to develop a male brain, despite her body remaining female. It follows that, in theory at least, if you shut down a male fetus's testosterone production during the second half of the pregnancy, you'll end up with the reverse situation - someone who looks male but has a female brain. Based on what I've seen over the last 3 years, it's not just theoretical, that is exactly what has happened with DES, and there must be several million people alive today as a result of that drug who were assigned male at birth, but have a woman's brain inside their male body.

[Guest]

As always, thank you for this abundant information, HughE.

Much of which I tend to share with my local Endo.

Huggs,

Joann