I have several transgenders among my friends and blog readers, and I'd be very curious to hear their responses to this article. It's about a condition I've never heard of, which causes people to feel as if one or more of their limbs really don't belong to them. The feeling can be so strong that they might become suicidal or, like the man featured in this article, actually force amputation of the limb(s) they reject.
The scientists interviewed here have pinpointed the area in the brain that, when damaged or improperly developed, causes these sensations: it's the area responsible for a person's mental "body map." Now, I can't help wondering if transgenders have something similar going on; but since this is the first I've heard about the condition and the research surrounding it, I'm just shooting in the dark here. I'd love to learn more. Does anyone know of any studies along these lines that have been done with transgenders?
5 comments:
Oh dear, thrall, this is going to be a LONG one, because there is a lot of explanation and a lot of personal experience that goes with it.
This is a question that, as a transsexual woman, is near and dear to my interests.
The answer is "no, with a but..." - a six paragraph long "but." Strap yourselves in, dear fellow-readers and dear hostess, this is going to be a long one. I promise a tl;dr summary at the end.
Page down if you don't want to read the next few paragraphs ;)
Speaking ONLY for myself for a moment, I have always, since I was a small child, felt that my penis was something that did not belong on my body. I learned to accept its presence, I even made a certain level of peace with it (not so with the rest of the bits... ew ew ew)... but I had to grow up with the disconcerting knowledge that part of my body was WRONG, and the feeling that it was always going to be wrong.
Unfortunately, there's not very much research that's been done on transgendered people that isn't directed at "curing" our gender variance - a lot of researchers, sadly, and virtually all who worked before the mid-1980s, hold or used to hold the not-very-secret opinion that gender variance is a sickness and needs to be cured. We've made a lot of progress in securing our civil rights given that being transgendered is still officially considered a mental illness.
The research that HAS been done on us, generally, is also irretrievably tainted by the fact that for decades, in order to receive the medical attention that we need to live as the person we have been our entire lives, we have had to lie, a LOT. Thankfully, things are changing considerably as a new generation of researchers and therapists takes over from the old, that understands that there are many ways to be transgender. But for many years, if you diverted in any respect from "the script" - that, if you were a trans woman, you had to come to your therapy appointments in a dress or a skirt and makeup; you had to say a few certain things - that you had always identified as a woman even from early childhood (even if you had actually been what I call a "trans-tomboy" and your femaleness was unimportant until puberty); that you wanted to have sexual relations with men but withheld because you didn't feel that you were gay; that you were repulsed by your penis - or you would be turned down for hormones and (if applicable) surgery.
This script is no longer as necessary; when I first came in to the Center for Sexual Health at the University of Minnesota (http://phs.umn.edu) - and I know that the CSH is a controversial thing among the trans community, because of its tight relationship with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, but this is my experience: From my first intake session at the CSH, I was very up front with the fact that I am a lesbian, and have always identified as one (even when I was trying to be a guy, I identified as a lesbian - and the mental gymnastics needed to maintain the cognitive dissonance necessary to say "I'm a lesbian" without admitting "to be a lesbian I have to be A WOMAN" were tiring; I just knew at the end of the day that the way I felt attraction to women "felt gay").
(to be continued on the next comment)
On the biological side - this is probably the part that you really wanted - there is evidence that the BST(c) region of the brain in transgendered people is more like that of our identified sexes than that of the sex we were assigned at birth. But there's a huge caveat to that: The BST(c) region can only be examined by dissection, which means the only ones we have available from trans people are ones that were taken from donated cadavers, usually of trans women and trans men who have been on hormones for years or decades. More recently, however, there's been some breakthrough research that suggests the androgen receptors in certain areas of our brains look more like those of our identified sex - trans men's look short and bushy like cissexual men's, and trans women's look long and smooth like cissexual women's.
To complicate matters, some trans people are also intersex, and have that going for them, as well. I do not believe in the theory held by a smallish number of trans people that transgender is itself an intersex condition.
The tl;dr summary: Research to date on transgender brains to figure out why and how we identify with the other sex from the one we were assigned to at birth is incomplete at best, with a lot of contradictory evidence, and tainted by poor practice from previous generations of therapists. Hopefully in the coming years, things will improve and better answers that will help generations of transgender kids yet to be born will be forthcoming.
I realized a few hours after posting that a term needed defining.
"Cissexual" is the opposite of "transsexual" - "cis-" is the latin prefix meaning "on the same side of" (opposed to "trans-", which means across). Likewise, "cisgender" opposes "transgender." So if you identify as the same sex that you were born as, congratulations! You are cissexual. The use of "cissexual" is, actually, necessary to constructively discuss transsexuality because without a specific word to oppose "transsexual," the opposite of "transsexual" becomes "normal," which is as wholly unconstructive to discuss trans identities and experiences as is using "normal" to oppose "gay" or "lesbian."
Thanks for being so thorough and so open, Katie. Transgenderism isn't an area I know a lot about, but I do have enormous empathy for anyone who has to go through life in a body that's not really their own.
I'm sure your comments will enlighten a lot of other people about this issue, and hopefully help some other transgenders out there who're struggling to understand their condition.
You and they might be interested to know that I've also received some e-mail feedback from another TG that tallies very closely with what you've said.
Thanks, thrall. I really wanted to focus on the experiential side of things more than the biological side, because I find that at least as far as transness goes, the biology research that's been done is JUST complete enough to really hinder one's self-understanding and acceptance if you pay too much attention to it. Transness really is something that affects you as a whole person.
I don't want to talk too much to BIID because I know absolutely nothing about it, but - if this makes sense - trans women don't just see ourselves as women, we see the world in that way (same in reverse for trans men). As Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote, "You know how you woke up this morning, and you knew you were a woman? Same thing."
Honestly, overall, I do not want there to be discovered a single biological factor controlling transness, because of the emotional devastation that could be wrought on somebody who is absolutely CERTAIN of their transness for a scientist to say, "no, your androgen receptors don't look right" or "no, this part of your brain looks like THAT sex when you feel like you are THAT sex."
Post a Comment