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Originally Posted by Ustwo
I'm not sure if thats a good analogy, and I bring it up because there must be something fundamentally different in someone who is a transexual vrs someone who is not. In my case lets say I woke up a woman tomorrow, a not unpopular theme in bad tv/cinima, provided I had all the right body parts and my BRAIN was female as well then I think I would start to think/act female. The female hormones would take over my 'female' brain and I would 'be' female. Feelings I had as a male would be foreign to me, and I might remember what it was like to be male, I wouldn't BE male.
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It's meant to promote an understanding of how a transsexual feels. The idea is to try to imagine how you would feel if your male brain and sexual identity were in a female body. It would likely feel out of place, uncomfortable, even as if your body were hostile.
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In someone who is a transexual, whatever part of the brain says 'male/female' must be switched,
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This is correct, at least according to the best current research. The part of the brain that says male/female is the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST), which in men has nearly twice as many neurons as in women. Male to female transsexuals have been shown to have a BSTc that is consistent with that of a normal female, regardless of orientation. In other words, regardless of orientation, men have physically male brains, women have physically female brains, and MTF transsexuals have female brains. Post birth hormone levels seem to have no effect on the BSTc.
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and my personal theory is that its the hormone sensitivity that does it. You might be making all the testosterone in the world but if your brain chemoreceptors are female, you will not have the male reaction to the hormone but the female one. Various degrees of this difference may explain homosexuality as well, though my guess is that for homosexuality it is a different set of receptors which are switched since the issue isn't identity. As much as we hate to admit it, sex is just chemical, and can go off and on like a light at times, I see no reason why sexual identity couldn't be something as basic.
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Interesting theory, but I haven't seen any evidence that would support it.
The best evidence seems to indicate, though it hasn't been proven yet, that the cause is a faulty hormone wash at about the 12th week after conception. Males are supposed to get an androgen heavy wash that signals their brains to develop into a male pattern. If this does not happen, it stays in it's default (female) state, and the baby is born with a male body and female brain. Subsequent hormone levels seem to have no effect on physical brain development.
There was an interesting case supporting the thoery that gender identity is fixed in the brain at birth, and not derived from socialization or hormones post-natal or at puberty. A pair of male identical twins were born, and there was an accident during circumcision that resulted in one having most of his penis accidently amputated. A doctor promoting the theory that gender identity is entirely socialized advised the parents to raise the child as a girl. They listened, and the remains of the penis were removed, female genitals constructed, and the child was raised as a girl. The parents were advised to overdo it, to dress him and socialize him in very feminine ways to emphasize her new sex. The doctor was essentially using the children as an experiment in socialization, which I find absolutely vile.
In any case, David rejecting the attempted programming at every turn, hating dresses and dolls and wanting to be more like his brother. Even at puberty, when he was given female hormones, he consistently felt as if there were something wrong with him and tried to reject the female programming that his parents and Dr. Quack tried to force on him. When it was revealed to him what was going on, he immediately took on a male persona, but it was too late, and a couple of years later comitted suicide. Short of having ovaries and a uterus, he had a female body in terms of physical structure and blood chemistry, yet his male brain still told him this was all wrong.
There is one type of genetic anomaly similar to what you describe here, called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). An XY child concieved with AIS lacks the ability to produce and enzyme which allows her cells to process androgens (male hormones). She gets the hormone washes at six weeks (which signals physical sexual development) and twelve weeks (which signals brain sexual development), but because her body cannot process androgens at all, it develops into it's default form, which is female--all mammals are by default female unless altered in the womb by androgens. She's born with what appears to be normal female genitals, identified and raised as a girl. It isn't until puberty when she fails to begin menstruation or goes in for her first gynocological exam that it is discovered that she has no uterus or ovaries, just undescended and undeveloped testicles. Her nascent testicles are removed and she's usually given female hormones to help her develop normally, because her body is unable to produce any female hormones naturally. She develops as a physically normal female, and there have been no known cases I've read of in which an AIS woman desired sex reassirnment to be male.