Being Trans: The Biological

Some trans people got married to post-modernism, forgetting to appreciate the bodily and tangible aspects of gender.

 

Post-modernism is the philosophical movement that says, “All identities are socially constructed. Categories don’t exist.” Some people go so far as to say that gender doesn’t exist and it's "not real." Because gender is not always associated with genitalia, some people choose not to engage in discussions of the material aspects of gender at all.

 

On one level, I agree! Yes, all identities are valid! Yes, categories are limiting and oppressive! Yes, gender is socially constructed! I agree with all of these statements 100%.

AND. AND. AND. 

When you have nothing to hold on to, identities start getting slippery and meaningless. But gender is not meaningless. It is an important part of our identity. As one clever writer and psychologist, Alex Stitt, put it sardonically in their article:

"The ongoing joke is that — if gender is so abstract — it can be anything. Today my gender is a screaming crow. Today my gender is an iridescent baby hippo munching on a watermelon. It may seem silly and even sardonic, but we’re talking about the essence of existence here, and there’s a danger in taking ourselves too seriously." 

 

AND. AND. AND.

Gender does exist. It is a very real, embodied experience of everyday life--from clothing to accessories to the way you walk, sit and gesture. Gender comes up in every social interaction from voice patterns to pronouns and beyond.

AND. AND. AND. 

There are neurological, biological and genetic explanations behind gender as well. 

Being trans, I can tell you that there is more to gender than it being simply a social construction. It is spiritual, it is material, and it is biological too. There are genetic and evolutionary components to gender and being transgender as well. 

When you’re caught up in the post-modern insistence that everything is socially constructed, you can’t help but ask yourself, “Is any of this even real? What if I’m just making it up? If gender is socially constructed, why don’t I just live my life as an agender person? Why do I have this primal and biological urge to be more male?” I had these questions. 

 

So I went looking for scientific explanations. I’m certainly not an expert and, unlike cultural identity politics and post-modern philosophy (which I do basically have a graduate degree in from studying ethnic minority politics), biology is 100% NOT my field. But I did come across some very interesting research. This research was extremely validating for me because I had some scientific proof that what I knew inside was objectively and scientifically proven. A few of the studies explained the biological reasons behind being trans:

• GENETIC: In identical twin studies, if one twin is transgender, the identical twin is more likely to also be transgender when compared to a fraternal twin. This strongly suggests that there is a genetic component to being transgender.

• NEUROLOGICAL: In brain scans of transgender women before they started transitioning, their brains more closely match the brain patterns of women than men. The same is true of transgender men before they started transitioning: their brains are more closely related to men than women.

• Brain development is influenced by hormones in utero. Some scientists believe that the level of testosterone and estrogen available to the fetus, and the ability of the fetus to receive these signals, may influence brain development and being transgender later in life.

• NOTE: This research is, as all good research should be, controversial. Other scientists argue in this article about a study of 2,600 transgender individuals, which was published in Nature, that the male and female brain is a spectrum, not a binary:

• "Researchers debate what kind of differences — if any — exist between male and female brains, and many such studies have been poorly interpreted. But scientists who study gender issues think that the confusion could be partly the result of a simplistic view of sex and gender identity. 'I don’t think there is something like a male or female brain, but it’s more a continuum,' says Baudewijntje Kreukels, a neuroscientist at Amsterdam University Medical Center."

• EVOLUTIONARY: Studies of transsexual fish and other animals show that sex is determined by something called a "gonad," not a chromosome. These studies suggest that biological sex is a spectrum rather than a binary. Humans, too, have inherited a genetic ability to change sexes (not a literal ability but in our genes we have both male and female genetic code) from our distant ancestors, which is deep in our genetic code: scientists have found that human biological sex is not determined by the X and Y chromosome as was previously thought, but by a piece of that chromosome, which both males and females have, called a “gonad”:

o   I highly suggest you check out this RadioLab episode called “Gonads X and Y,” which explains how fish are transsexual and how humans also have genetics that allow them to be both sexes. Just one piece of the chromosome will “turn off” signals to be the other sex, but every human does have on a chromosome level both male and female genes inside of them. 

Main take away point? Yuval Noah Harari sums it up well:

“Biology enables, culture forbids. Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities, it’s culture that obliges people to realize some possibilities while forbidding others.” –Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

Post continued shortly.