The AMA on the Origins of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Click to start the presentation in a new window.



Money Quote:

"Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity are conferred during the first 12 weeks of gestation, and they are irreversible"

There are some blatant contradictions which Dr Kate O'Hanlan struggles with - but that's really the fault of the constraining binary language; homosexual or heterosexual. In fact, Biology doesn't conform to a strict binary, and the edges blur between those two extremes. Someone in the minority near the divide can be "pushed over" one way or the other - usually towards behaviourally exclusive heterosexuality (regardless of feelings) due to societal pressure, but being abused as a child, or less commonly as an adult, can cause a push the other way. When the trauma is particularly strong, such as rape trauma resulting in a pathological fear of men, or extreme religious pressure to "resist their inner demons", they can become fanatics. The extreme Right-Wing Religious Homophobic politician who's caught with his pants down is now so common it's a cliche.

Or, untraumatised, they can remain happily Bisexual, or Asexual.

A similar case applies when it comes to Gender Identity, that minority who are bigendered can be pushed one way or the other, or remain androgenous or neutrois. How large those minorities are is another matter, but 1 in 3 seems a good estimate.

This accounts for all of the observed facts; that both gender identity and sexual orientation are inherent, congenital, and unchangeable for most intents and purposes, for a few they are not quite, if the person is traumatised enough. For the rest, the trauma does the same amount of damage, but has no other effect whatsoever.

Identity : Patient Room 232

Just read it. Read the whole. A story that would make an Oscar-winning screenplay. The story of Eric Drew.

I was originally put onto this by M.Italiano, regarding a small part of the story: that this man's genes changed as the result of his cancer treatment. But there's far more to the story than that. I can't summarise it, and I won't attempt to.

From DISCOVER magazine, The Man Who Lost His Name—and His Genetic Identity

You might want to go visit here afterwards too.

MC Escher's Waterfall

And this is a model showing how it works....

An Essay on Gender, Sex, Self, Identity and Brains

Taken from my comments on a thread over at I Blame The Patriarchy.

m Andrea asked some really good questions about

And now let’s remember to ask ourselves how is physiology related to the essential essence of a human ?

That encapsulates the crux of the issue, not just of M vs F, but categories, humanity, a whole host of things.

What is self? What is identity?

If (an event happens that causes trauma to your brain), and you survive, are you the same person as before? That might depend on where the damage is, some people have had radical changes of personality due to brain injury, others appear unaffected, even if they have some “cognitive impairment”, “sensory impairment” or paralysis.

What about less crude effects? Just a few microgams of LSD-25 in the bloodstream can change personality. Pituitary and other glandular tumours can cause behavioural changes and may actually cause re-wiring in some areas of the brain that are particularly plastic. Post-partum psychosis is a real threat to women after pregnancy, and that’s just due to see-sawing hormone levels.

Half of psychiatry – the half that actually works – is about neurotransmitters, though some good work is being done on electro-stimulation to cause neural changes to re-wire after damage due to PTSD, and even cure some ADD and ADHD conditions. As long as the area involved is in the rather plastic cerebral cortex, not the hindbrain, such changes should be possible (and could be quite nightmarish in the wrong hands).

Let’s look at hormones. People who are about to have their hormone levels change radically and over more than a few weeks should be made aware that the brain will re-wire as the result.

The most common cause of such hormonal-induced change is puberty. The second most common cause is a first pregnancy.

A rare cause is HRT (hormone replacement therapy), especially when administered as part of a transsexual transition, but also at times as part of cancer treatment (which gives us a good baseline for a control group when studying trans people).

The changes happen fairly quickly, they are perceivable very early by the person concerned. The degree of relief or conversely discomfort caused by the first signs of them is often used to confirm or exclude diagnosis of transsexuality.

See http://www.avitale.com/TreatmentPlan.htm Stage II

It is well documented that the administration of cross sex hormones have a mitigating effect on patents suffering from severe gender dysphoria. The effect is so marked that the treatment is used to confirm or reject the GID diagnosis. Fortunately. psychological outcomes precede permanent physiological secondary sex characteristic changes, making it an ideal diagnostic confirmation/contraindicating tool. Referral is made to a physician who is well versed in the administration and monitoring of patients taking cross sex hormones.

Psychotherapy: Early Stage: Patient is closely monitored for adverse psychological effects of HRT. If no adverse effects are detected or reported and patient reports relief and wishes to continue HRT, patient is educated and prepared for psychological and physiological changes to secondary sex characteristics that are well known to result from the treatment.

Some individuals accept the physical and psychological changes brought about by HRT and incorporate them into their originally assigned gender role. Others may choose to transition to living full time in the new gender role.

.(Parenthetically, although I’ve never had to deal with PMT every month for decades, I did have to deal with a PMT/Menopause/PMT/Menopause cycle due to uncontrolled hormone swings for several months in 2005. I’d rather not repeat the experience.)

Back to HRT:

There are gross changes to the size of brains that are easily measured:
Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure by Pol et al, Europ Jnl Endocrinology, Vol 155, suppl_1, S107-S114 2006

Results: Compared with controls, anti-androgen + estrogen treatment decreased brain volumes of male-to-female subjects towards female proportions, while androgen treatment in female-to-male subjects increased total brain and hypothalamus volumes towards male proportions.

But we know little of the details.

Some areas don’t change. For example, trans men show male-pattern anatomy and cognitive processes before as well as after hormone therapy in some areas.

Neuroimaging Differences in Spatial Cognition between Men and Male-to-Female Transsexuals Before and During Hormone Therapy by Scoening et al J Sex Med. 2009 Sep 14.

Conclusions. Our results confirmed previously reported deviances of brain activation patterns in transsexual men (sic - these are MtoF i.e. transsexual women) from men without GID and also corroborated these findings in a group of transsexual patients receiving cross-sex hormone therapy. The present study indicates that there are a priori differences between men and transsexual patients caused by different neurobiological processes or task-solving strategies and that these differences remain stable over the course of hormonal treatment.

So it’s not that simple. There’s no such thing as a “male brain” or a “female brain”, any more than there’s a “male height” or “female height”. (Yet men tend to be taller than women).

Height isn’t a social construct, but the concepts of “Tall” and “Short” are. 5' 5" is tall for a woman in Thailand, short for a woman in Kenya. And tall for a man anywhere in Europe in the middle ages.

Looking at Gender… 80% or so is a social construct. It differs from place to place and time to time. Pink was a “traditionally masculine” colour in the 19th century. There are few “traditionally gendered” behaviours that have any biological basis at all, and fewer still that are strongly based on biology.

A lot of the ones thought to be based on biology – as they pretty much all were in the 19th century – aren’t. That doesn’t mean to say that none are, we have to look at the actual evidence. Mathematical ability – sexually isomorphic. Instinctive ballistics calculations – sexually dimorphic. And it’s all statistical anyway, we have to treat people as individuals.

One of the areas – or rather, clusters of areas – that is sexually dimorphic (ie boys and girls are anatomically different) is in the lymbic nucleus, which leads to different emotional responses and instincts, which leads to gender identity (or rather, sex identity) crystallisation due to socialisation.

Details over at Biased-Interaction Theory of Psychosexual Development: “How Does One Know if One is Male or Female?” M.Diamond Sex Roles (2006) 55:589–600

Theory predicts that if you bring up a standard, cis-sexual girl in a world where all the people she interacts with are non-op transsexuals, then she will identify as a trans-sexual boy. Because all the boys think, feel, emote, hear, smell etc like she does, and the girls are quite different.

I over-simplify. Because she’d get distress from taking male hormones (wrong neurology) and wouldn’t desire body modification or surgery. Her body map and body are congruent. So she’d be non-op.

Goodness knows what her sexual orientation would be. Is that a matter of pheremones and physical attraction to shape, or psychological attraction? A combination maybe? Or would the incongruence lead her to be Bi or Asexual?

I don’t know.

An explanation of why I don't know:
My own sexual orientation was asexual, and mildly lesbian before my change. Now I'm straight, with a Libido and everything. Was this the result of a removal of a psychological block, or brain re-wiring in a borderline case? Or a combination? The timing is right for the latter, but one area the specialist psych did surprise me with was her warning for me to be prepared in case my orientation changed. When it did, some 4 months later, it looks like the only one at all surprised was me. Everyone else seemed to expect it, either from ignorance of the issue, or possibly seeing signs and portents that I myself did not.

Whatever. It happened. It did leave me with a psychological aversion to thinking about the issue though, which accounts for me not researching this area as thoroughly as I might. I don't know. I should. I'd rather not go there right now though, it would distract me too much from being a parent and doing my PhD.

I try to be objective. I don't always succeed. No scientist does. The good ones realise it, and state the limits of their objectivity, so others can make proper allowances.

200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

The Joy of Stats, from Hans Rosling.



More over at TED. Such as these insights on poverty.

Definitions

A post I wrote on another site.

justpassingthrough wrote:

This is where we’re never going to agree. I think it’s illogical, if not preposterous, to conclude that a man who has mostly feminine-coded personality traits is therefore a woman, barring body dysphoria, which is a medical condition that can only be alleviated through the reconstruction of sex organs. Which is again, not enough to qualify as a full on metamorphosis from one sex to another.

But is it illogical that a person who has mostly feminine-coded personality traits is therefore a woman?

You’re begging the question when you say a priori that this person is “a man”. You’ve already assumed your conclusion, so of course you say it’s preposterous.

It really comes down to how you define “male” and “female”. For the extremes, and 59 people out of 60 are at those extremes, it’s simple, easy, obvious. But for some human beings, not so much.

Does being brought up as female make you a woman? David Reimer’s case would argue against that.

What about chromosomes, as the current policy of the Roman Catholic Church says? If you have 2 X chromosomes, you’re a woman (at least, that’s what the Indonesian Catholic Bishops have ruled). Even if you’re 47XXY, identify as male, and have fathered children. The disadvantages of this are obvious.

What about genitalia at birth? Apart from those with ambiguous genitalia, there are those like the Guevedoces whose genitalia changes from female-at-birth to male-after-puberty. Again, we sometimes end up with “women” who have fathered children, and identify as male.

Then there are those few whose transition is the other way.. but again, only the male form isn’t always sterile. It is in some syndromes, merely infertile in others. (Not quite true – one unique case being studied by the Mayo clinic is infertile in both, but he has male neurology).

What about the neuro-anatomically defined “feminine-coded personality traits”, as is the legal definition in Australia and Spain (for example)? Well, as you said, “mostly” applies here too, the brain is no more strictly binary than any other part of the anatomy. And again, in some trans women who are unable to access treatment when young, a few have fathered children. Once they’re post-op, this is impossible of course, and in some jurisdictions, all trans people must be sterilised by law to be recognised.

In Sweden for example. Or Western Australia. Not Germany though, there was a recent court case overturning this requirement as being far too reminiscent of their horrific past.

Then there’s other effects that are correlated with the “female feelings” caused by a female neuro-anatomy. Those traits can cause progressive physiological and biochemical dysfunction due to female-pattern braincells immersed in a male-pattern hormonal environment. You’ve also mentioned the “body map” issue, but even when not present, the requirement for hormone replacement in doses that will visibly change the body can exist.

The humane definition is that if someone thinks, feels, and above all identifies as female due to their neuro-anatomy, then they’re female. But that one’s unsatisfying to many people, perhaps most, especially cis-sexual women. Where do their rights to arrogantly define other people as female or not, or in extreme cases as human or not, end?

See Woods vs C.G Studios, where it was held obita dicta that as a person had had sex reassignment at age 3 months, they were neither male, female, nor child, thus did not fall within the definition of “human” in the legal dictionary used by the court.

This is really the crux of the issue, the cause of all of the controversy, legal and societal persecution of Trans and Intersexed people. Do the words "Man" and "Woman" have any meaning? I think they do. Do they apply to every human? No, they manifestly don't. How do we tell if someone is a "Man" or a "Woman" when they don't conform completely to either stereotype in every way? I think you just ask them. How do we reliably separate the objective metric "sex" from the subjective quality "gender"? Well, even the most butch lesbian is a woman, we manage that separation pretty well. Well, now we do. That wasn't always true.

The internet has (kind of) run out of space - CNN

As mentioned in a previous post...

The internet has (kind of) run out of space - CNN

On Thursday, the internet as we know it ran out of space.

The nonprofit group that assigns addresses to service providers announced that, on Thursday morning, it allocated the last free internet addresses available from the current pool used for most of the internet's history.

"This is an historic day in the history of the internet, and one we have been anticipating for quite some time," said Raul Echeberria, chairman of the Number Resource Organization.

But fear not. The group has seen this coming for more than a decade and is ready with a new pool of addresses that it expects to last, well, forever.

Don't worry, nothing can go wro
SEGFAULT KERNEL PANIC f0 0f c7 c8 dd d9

418 Error I'm a teapot

Life Matters

From the ABC : Making girls and boys - Life Matters - 8 February 2011

Today's guest has explored the science and psychology of sex and gender in her book Making Girls and Boys: inside the science of sex.

Audio MP3

My comment :

Thanks to the Jane McCredie, and the ABC team for this programme.

Intersexed and Trans people face enormous challenges, most of which are completely un-necessary and entirely of society's making.

These challenges are due to an "Ick" factor regarding anything to do with sex that's strange or outside our own experience, and very often due to ignorance. The DLP's policy to prevent "Intersex marriages" is an example, they think it must be some sort of Leftist Political Plot To Undermine Society.

*Sigh*

Others' lack of knowledge can and does kill us, quite literally, and certainly harms us.

Thanks for doing something that will inform people. Goodness knows, we need all the help we can get, if we're to get rid of discriminatory legislation and legally allow the provision of appropriate health care.

Old Blue Eyes

Actually... not so old.

From Science Daily, Blue-eyed Humans Have A Single, Common Ancestor

“Originally, we all had brown eyes”, said Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. “But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a “switch”, which literally “turned off” the ability to produce brown eyes”. The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives colour to our hair, eyes and skin. The “switch”, which is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 does not, however, turn off the gene entirely, but rather limits its action to reducing the production of melanin in the iris – effectively “diluting” brown eyes to blue. The switch’s effect on OCA2 is very specific therefore. If the OCA2 gene had been completely destroyed or turned off, human beings would be without melanin in their hair, eyes or skin colour – a condition known as albinism.

Evolution: it's happening now, as I write this. And this particular mutation is at most 10,000 years old...

The mutation of brown eyes to blue represents neither a positive nor a negative mutation. It is one of several mutations such as hair colour, baldness, freckles and beauty spots, which neither increases nor reduces a human’s chance of survival. As Professor Eiberg says, “it simply shows that nature is constantly shuffling the human genome, creating a genetic cocktail of human chromosomes and trying out different changes as it does so.”

Some of which have more interesting effects than others.

Untitled Picture

Yes, it weirds me out too. Siblings? Couples? Photoshops? MtoF? FtoM? I don't know. Supposedly they're couples.. though my bet's on siblings. Eye colour and earlobe shape differ.

Dan Carlin - Hardcore History Archive

Definitely an "Interesting URL".

Dan Carlin - Hardcore History Archive

Latest episode : Death Throes of the Republic IV

Sulla returns to Rome to show the Republic what REAL political violence looks like. Civil war and deadly partisan payback will pave the way for reforms pushed at sword point. Lots of heads will roll...literally.

NSS Department : "“Injustice at Every Turn,”

From prweb:

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) today released a comprehensive new report, “Injustice at Every Turn,” revealing the depth of discrimination against transgender and gender non-conforming people in a wide range of areas, including education, health care, employment, and housing. The study, based on the results from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), was based on responses from over 6,450 participants. The NTDS is the first large-scale national study of discrimination against transgender and gender non-conforming Americans, and paints a more complete picture than any prior research to date.

Among the key findings from “Injustice at Every Turn”:

• Respondents were nearly four times more likely to live in extreme poverty, with household income of less than $10,000.
• Respondents were twice as likely to be unemployed compared to the population as a whole. Half of those surveyed reported experiencing harassment or other mistreatment in the workplace, and one in four were fired because of their gender identity or expression.
• While discrimination was pervasive for the entire sample, it was particularly pronounced for people of color. African-American transgender respondents fared far worse than all others in many areas studied.
• Housing discrimination was also common. 19% reported being refused a home or apartment and 11% reported being evicted because of their gender identity or expression. One in five respondents experienced homelessness because of their gender identity or expression.
• An astonishing 41% of respondents reported attempting suicide, compared to only 1.6% of the general population.
• Discrimination in health care and poor health outcomes were frequently experienced by respondents. 19% reported being refused care due to bias against transgender or gender-nonconforming people, with this figure even higher for respondents of color. Respondents also had over four times the national average of HIV infection.
• Harassment by law enforcement was reported by 22% of respondents and nearly half were uncomfortable seeking police assistance.
• Despite the hardships they often face, transgender and gender non-conforming persons persevere. Over 78% reported feeling more comfortable at work and their performance improving after transitioning, despite the same levels of harassment in the workplace.

It's a convenience sample, and excludes trans people too poor or otherwise disadvantaged to have Internet access. The number of African-American respondents is only 1/3 of expectation if all other things were equal, so obviously they're not.

It therefore is likely to understate any problems.

The TLDR version, the Executive Summary, is a 1MB Pdf, the full version is 25MB.

General consensus in various Australian Trans networks - the Australian Transsexual Support Network, for example - is that while the details may differ, the situation here is broadly similar.

And the worldwide reaction from Trans people has been "No Sh1t, Sherlock".

Priceless

The Class of '75.

Well, it wasn't quite like that for me... I've had no cosmetic surgery... but, well, see my previous post.

Perpetuating the US Underclass

There are many ways of accomplishing this, of making sure there is a constant pool of cheap, unskilled labour. To shine your shoes, or wait at tables, to open doors or deliver pizzas.

One way is to criminalise behaviours used by the underclass to enjoy themselves. Not too much - just enough so they get a criminal record. Just enough so that few in the underclass have respect for the majesty of the law. Just enough so that doing time in jail is not seen as a big deal, it's something most everyone does at one time or another.

Enough to make sure that predators on the poor are indistinguishable from their prey - predators who will keep them from rising above their station, and stop them from saving. Because any savings will soon be stolen, and wasted.



Another way is to arrange any taxation and social security net so that there are positive financial penalties for being "uppity". That unless you earn more than the average wage, you're actually better off in monetary terms earning minimum wage, and not a cent more. Ideally, if you earn in-between minimum and average wage, you should be financially worse off than earning nothing at all.

Consider these figures for a family of four in Mississippi:



See what I mean?

Note that the actual disposable income of the lowest earners, after food, shelter, and healthcare are paid for, is less than $2 a day per person. For books, for additional education, for clothing, for telecommunications. For school outings, and savings for higher education costs. For Holidays.

Not exactly a life of ease and luxury, is it?

For those who are on an average wage, they actually get less in the way of raw monetary terms. The difference is though, that they have choices in the way the money they're benefiting from is disbursed, and that shouldn't be under-estimated. Not having to shop at places which accept food-stamps. Being able to have more choice over diet. Not being compelled to have their children served meals where "ketchup is a vegetable" at schools.

Not being reminded in a myriad of ways that they're the underclass.

No, I've not turned Lefty in my old age. Or if I have, it's because the Right has moved away from me, not me from it. I still despise the demagogues that "mobilise the vote", using a combination of racism and the politics of envy. Neither do I buy in to the idea that this is all the product of some vast, malign conspiracy. Like Topsy, I think it "just growed".

But from an outsider's viewpoint, any society where such a vast proportion of the population is in jail, or recently released from jail, that society has a problem, no matter what the cause.

It doesn't have to be like this. It's not like this in most places, though there are positive advantages for those living "in the middle" in the USA. Paying less for meals - because the kitchen staff are paid peanuts. Having a gaggle of servants and bellhops, where in other western societies, there's far more automation as those on the bottom are so much more expensive. Rents being cheap, as houses are cheap, because building labour is so cheap. Even in rural Australia, $4350 will pay for 6 months rent, not more. Less in most capitals.

Canberra House and Unit (Apartment) prices:



The houses aren't exactly mansions either.

From TheBlogProf, a graph showing relative tax burden :


This is always a bad sign. It means one of two things: either a welfare state out of control, doing a Robin Hood act. Robbing the Rich to feed the, well, not exactly poor, but the State Bureaucracy that paternalistically manages the poor (for their own good of course)... or it means that income inequality has become pathological. The place now has a 3rd world income demographic, a few obscenely rich oligarchical families owning and controlling the country's wealth - with the politicians owned in fee simple to maintain the status quo.

Both are perversions of the Free Market that has proven so successful in wealth generation in comparison with un-Free systems.

I'm good at diagnosis, but cure, that's another matter. That's up to the US voting public. The discontent has given rise to the "Tea Party", but that can easily be co-opted into expending its strength in unproductive directions. It's not certain that less regulation is the answer - because that will just give the oligarchs free rein to distort the market further. More regulation though is even more dangerous, as it allows the Big Players to raise barriers against entry, and to drive lesser ones to extinction by fixed costs, independent of revenue.

What's needed is for an investigation of what existing regulations have been flouted with impunity, by whom, and how. The Rangel case is a perfect example - the man in charge of the IRS (US Tax Department) cheating on his taxes with no criminal or financial penalty, other than having to give back some of what he stole.

When Laws are only to be obeyed by the Little People - then you have a problem. When you have businesses too big to fail, when you have the very, very wealthiest paying no taxes to speak of, shifting the burden onto the merely rich.. then the problem's bigger still.

Yasi

From New Matilda

Residents on Palm Island are preparing for the worst as Cyclone Yasi looks likely to submerge and flatten large parts of the island.

Victoria Laine, who is a registered nurse working in the island’s hospital, said only about 600 of the predominantly Indigenous population of 3000 had left the island, while another 300 had made their way to one of the island’s two evacuation centres. The rest remained in houses that were not built to withstand a cyclone of this strength.

"Much of the housing on the island is what we call informal — so made of tin sheets," she said.

Laine said medical staff and police had made the decision to stay on the island, which is 65km north-west of Townsville, to deal with the cyclone’s aftermath.

If it had hit the USA...

Complete History Of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris

Krasni!

See also : Egypt.

Genetic Algorithms in Action

See BoxCar2D

Genetic Algorithm Car Evolution Using Box2D Physics (v1.2)

 
Version 1.2 is up!! Press "R" to reset and "P" to pause. Use the UP/DOWN buttons to vote for cars.


HINT: Try upping the mutation rate, and increasing max number of wheels...

Putting a veil on Egypt

From Phyllis Chessler at Pyjamas Media:

Cairo University Class of 1959

Cairo University Class of 1978

Cairo University Class of 1995

Cairo University Class of 2004

Cairo University Class of 2015

Females not permitted on campus by order of the Muslim Brotherhood

"Islam is dogma and worship, a fatherland and nationality, religion and state, spirituality and action, the Qur'an and the sword"

For a guide to what's happening in Egypt, see the events of 93 years ago.

Useful USB Devices

A USB charger that is a Perpetual Motion Machine of the First Kind



And just as useful, a USB Pet Rock.

Wine and Superconductors

From io9:

Yoshihiko Takano and other researchers at the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan were in the process of creating a certain kind of superconductor by putting a compound in hot water and soaking it for hours. They also soaked the compound in a mixture of water and ethanol. It appears the process was going well, because the scientists decided to have a little party. The party included sake, whisky, various wines, shochu, and beer. At a certain point, the researchers decided to try soaking the compound in the many, many liquors they had on hand and seeing how they compared to the more conventional soaking liquids.

As you do.

When they tested the resulting materials for superconductivity, they found that the ones soaked in commercial booze came out ahead. About 15 percent of the material became a superconductor for the water mixed with ethanol, and less for the pure water. By comparison, Shochu jacked up conductivity by 23 percent and red wine managed to supercharge over 62 percent of the material. The scientists were pleased, if bemused with their results.

The data comes first. Explanations afterwards. No, I haven't got a clue why this should be so either. We need to repeat the experiment to make sure the effect is real - and if it is, do some serious thinking. That's Thinking with a "Th" not a "Dr".

White Matter and (Trans)Sexual Differentiation

From New Scientist:

Transsexual differences caught on brain scan

Antonio Guillamon's team at the National University of Distance Education in Madrid, Spain, think they have found a better way to spot a transsexual brain. In a study due to be published next month, the team ran MRI scans on the brains of 18 female-to-male transsexual people who'd had no treatment and compared them with those of 24 males and 19 females.

They found significant differences between male and female brains in four regions of white matter – and the female-to-male transsexual people had white matter in these regions that resembled a male brain (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.05.006). "It's the first time it has been shown that the brains of female-to-male transsexual people are masculinised," Guillamon says.

In a separate study, the team used the same technique to compare white matter in 18 male-to-female transsexual people with that in 19 males and 19 females. Surprisingly, in each transsexual person's brain the structure of the white matter in the four regions was halfway between that of the males and females (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.11.007). "Their brains are not completely masculinised and not completely feminised, but they still feel female," says Guillamon.

The articles are:

White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A diffusion tensor imaging study Rametti et al Journal of Psychiatric Research, Volume 45, Issue 2, February 2011, Pages 199-204

- which I've blogged about before, and

The microstructure of white matter in male to female transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A DTI study Rametti et al Journal of Psychiatric Research, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 30 December 2010

Results
MtF transsexuals differed from both male and female controls bilaterally in the superior longitudinal fasciculus, the right anterior cingulum, the right forceps minor, and the right corticospinal tract.
Conclusions
Our results show that the white matter microstructure pattern in untreated MtF transsexuals falls halfway between the pattern of male and female controls. The nature of these differences suggests that some fasciculi do not complete the masculinization process in MtF transsexuals during brain development.

While we're on the subject, another good article.

Sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation, Savic et al Progress in Brain Research, Volume 186, 2010, Pages 41-62 (Chapter 4)

There is a vast array of factors that may lead to gender problems (Table 1). Twin and family research has shown that genetic factors play a part ([Coolidge et al., 2002], [Gómez-Gil et al., 2010a], [Hare et al., 2009] and [van Beijsterveldt et al., 2006]). Rare chromosomal abnormalities may lead to transsexuality (Hengstschläger et al., 2003) and it was found that polymorphisms of the genes for ERα and ERβ, AR repeat length polymorphism and polymorphisms in the aromatase or CYP17 gene also produced an increased risk ([Bentz et al., 2008], [Hare et al., 2009] and [Henningsson et al., 2005]).
Abnormal hormone levels during early development may play a role, as suggested by the high frequency of polycystic ovaries, oligomenorrhea and amenorrhea in female-to-male (FtM) transsexuals. This observation suggests early intrauterine exposure of the female fetus to abnormally high levels of testosterone (Padmanabhan et al., 2005 V. Padmanabhan, M. Manikkam, S. Recabarren and D. Foster, Prenatal testosterone excess programs reproductive and metabolic dysfunction in the female, Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology 246 (2005), pp. 165–174.Padmanabhan et al., 2005). A recent study did not confirm a significantly increased prevalence of polycystic ovary syndrome. However, there was a significantly higher prevalence of hyperandrogynism in FtM transsexuals, also indicating the possible involvement of high testosterone levels in transsexuality (Mueller et al., 2008). A girl with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who has been exposed to extreme levels of testosterone in utero, will also have an increased chance of becoming transsexual. Although the likelihood of transsexuality developing in such cases is 300–1000 higher than normal, the risk for transsexuality in CAH is still only 1–3% (Zucker et al., 1996), whereas the probability of serious gender problems is 5.2% (Dessens et al., 2005). The consensus is, therefore, that girls with CAH should be raised as girls, even when they are masculinized (Hughes et al., 2006).

Epileptic women who were given phenobarbital or diphantoin during pregnancy also have an increased risk of giving birth to a transsexual child. Both these substances change the metabolism of the sex hormones and can act on the sexual differentiation of the child’s brain. In a group of 243 women who had been exposed to such substances during pregnancy, Dessens et al. (1999) found three transsexual children and a few others with less radical gender problems; these are relatively high rates for such a rare condition. On the “DES” (diethylstilbestrol, an estrogen-like substance—see later) children’s website they claimed that transsexuality occurs in 35.5% and a gender problem in 14% of the DES cases (links [Gender Identity Research and Education Society] and [DES Sons’ International Research] webpages). This is alarming, but needs, of course, to be confirmed in a formal study. There are no indications that postnatal social factors could be responsible for the occurrence of transsexuality (Cohen-Kettenis et al., 1998).

And rather a lot more.

We're now no longer answering the question "is cross-sexed neuro-anatomy causal of transsexuality?", we're identifying exactly which bits of the brain are affected, to what degree, and with what effects.

Australia Day 2011

Or "Invasion day" as some of the more politically correct call it.



For those readers not from Australia, it's our equivalent of July 4th. The day the first fleet landed.

I think it right that it should be both mourned and celebrated. That an act of theft can't be undone, so all we can do is make sure the ultimate outcome for the descendants of the victims is better than if it had not happened.

Turning a Man

This one's about the Sambia tribe in New Guinea.

From DISCOVER Magazine in 1992:

When I began to work in the New Guinea highlands nearly 30 years ago, the highlanders were just emerging from Stone Age conditions of incessant intertribal warfare. Even more startling to me than the stone axes and heavily armed men that I met were the hostility and rigid role divisions between the sexes. Women served as beasts of burden, while unmarried men lived homosexually in communal houses to which the women only brought food. The most feared warriors, whose territory was still closed to outsiders during my early visits, were the people I’m referring to as the Sambia.

It’s an exquisitely cruel irony that one of the world’s largest known concentrations of 5AR-deficient pseudohermaphrodites, characterized by ambiguous gender, occurs among the Sambia, whose culturally imposed differences between the sexes are among the sharpest of any human society in the world. Sambia men function as fighters and hunters, women as gardeners and mothers. The men do not participate in onerous gardening work, believing that possession of a penis makes them unable to grow edible sweet potatoes. Not only are there separate footpaths for men and women within the village, but also separate living spaces for husband and wife within their small hut, marked off by planks on the floor. Children’s play after the age of about five is segregated by sex. Eventually, boys are forbidden to talk with or even glance at women, who are regarded as dirty polluters. (They have that vagina, something truly no good.) The sole acceptable position for intercourse is with the man on top, so that he can get up immediately upon ejaculating to reduce his exposure to the polluting vagina.

Alas, only women can secrete milk and grow sweet potatoes, so the Sambia father has no choice but to entrust his sons to their polluting mother’s care during early childhood. At the age of seven or so, men are at last able to take over responsibility for their sons. That’s done by forcibly initiating young boys into life in the communal men’s house, where boys and bachelor men live as a group, and where women are banned. In lieu of mother’s milk, young boy initiates are told that daily consumption of the bachelors’ semen is essential to their growing big, becoming men, and living long. Young boys fellate older ones daily until puberty, whereupon the fellators reverse roles and are fellated by the next crop of younger boys. The punishment of death is threatened for those boys who reveal the secret or those women who stumble upon it. The young boys are taught that women are harmful, so there is no room for dating or other premarital heterosexual involvement. Other unacceptable practices include male self- masturbation (semen should be ingested, not expelled, they believe) and homosexual anal intercourse.

In the absence of dating, marriages are arranged, often at birth, and consummated when the girl has her first menstrual flow. At that point the young bachelor undergoes a shock rivaling his forcible initiation into the homosexual men’s club years earlier. Heterosexual procedures are at last explained to him, and he is told to initiate them with his bride, possessor of that vagina, something truly no good. (For a look of embarrassed horror, I’ve seen nothing to rival photos taken of highland bachelors listening for the first time to an older man’s graphic explanation of sexual intercourse.) Once a man’s first child is born, homosexual activities are considered as dangerous as heterosexual activities were before his marriage. Despite this extreme flip-flop in male sexual orientation, Sambia men still manage to make the readjustment and perpetuate their tribe.

Then comes what I think must be one of the great understatements of all time:

Not unexpectedly, pseudohermaphrodites, with their sexual ambiguity, don’t fit easily into Sambia life, with its sex stereotyping.

Quite.

In contrast to the lives of the Xanadu pseudohermaphrodites, those of their Sambia counterparts are not stories with happy endings. Most Sambia pseudohermaphrodites are raised as boys; it’s unclear whether the Sambia label such babies as boys with birth defects, or actually assign them to a third sex, called turnim man, which starts out female but is anticipated to become male. Some of the boys are rejected by their fathers or viewed with shame by their mothers. They are sometimes teased, humiliated, and subjected to cruel gossip by their peers (You don’t have a penis! Go play with the girls!). Once those who have been raised as boys are initiated into the communal men’s house, they serve as fellators but, either by choice or out of embarrassment, never as fellateds. A few obtain wives, but in at least two documented cases the wives described them as not sexually satisfying. In one study of ten adult Sambia pseudohermaphrodites, only five were married, and one committed suicide.

A few Sambia pseudohermaphrodites are identified at birth as girls and reared as girls. Two of them were even married to men, but both were rejected in rage by their husbands after attempted intercourse. One such woman was named Moragu. On the first attempt at intercourse, Moragu’s new husband was able to penetrate only one to two inches. Similarly frustrated on a second attempt, the husband pulled back Moragu’s skirt for a closer look and was scandalized to discover testes and a small penis within the labia. After the enraged and publicly humiliated husband threatened his mate with murder, Moragu left the Sambia homeland to make a new life elsewhere.

Of course, we're more civilised. For some value of "civilised".

The pseudohermaphrodites themselves are made to feel like pariahs, mocked to their faces and whispered about behind their backs. Nearly 40 years after graduating high school, I still cringe to recall how my schoolmates stared and laughed at one unhappy classmate with ambiguous genitals whenever we took showers in the locker room. His life must have been daily torture. Nowadays there is much sympathy for patients with other types of genetic defects, but not yet for pseudohermaphrodites. The harsh fact is that gender ambiguity does arise occasionally, and it presents itself in a wide range of forms. I hope that as our scientific knowledge about pseudohermaphrodites advances, they will meet with the sympathy they deserve.

That article, I remind you, was written in 1992. 19 years later, there has been little change, and what change there has been (in the USA at least) has been retrograde more often than not. Not just in the US though. From the Albury-Wodonga TwinCityFocus some three weeks ago:

Lavington: On Monday (Jan 3) Donna Macklan went to visit a friend. Two people in their twenties viciously assaulted Donna, knocking her out of her wheel chair and hitting her with a shovel.

Whilst they were doing this they screamed “you hermaphrodite”. There is a full report in today’s Border Mail.

The victim is technically TS rather than IS. But bigots make no such fine distinctions. And national media, which would normally wax lyrical in their condemnation of such a brutal attack on a wheelchair-bound victim, is unaccountably silent about it when one of "those people" is hospitalised.

Memorising the Parts of the Brain

From the Psych Files.

Numbers

1.6 million to 2.8 million:
The estimated number of homeless youth in the United States.

20 to 40 percent:
The portion of the homeless youth population who are gay or transgender, compared to only 5 to 10 percent of the overall youth population.

320,000 to 400,000:
A conservative estimate of the number of gay and transgender youth facing homelessness each year.

14.4:
The average age that lesbian and gay youth in New York become homeless.

13.5:
The average age that transgender youth in New York become homeless.

58 percent:
The portion of homeless gay and transgender youth who have been sexually assaulted, compared to 33 percent of homeless heterosexual youth.

44 percent:
The portion of homeless gay and transgender youth who reported being asked by someone on the street to exchange sex for money, food, drugs, shelter, or clothes, compared to 26 percent of straight homeless youth.

13:
The average age gay and lesbian youth now come out after self-identifying as gay or lesbian as young as ages 5 to 7.

62 percent:
The portion of homeless gay and transgender youth who experience discrimination from their families, compared to 30 percent of their heterosexual peers.

42 percent:
The portion of homeless gay and transgender youth who abuse alcohol, compared to 27 percent of heterosexual youth.

62 percent:
The portion of homeless gay and transgender youth who attempt suicide, compared to 29 percent of their heterosexual homeless peers.

8.4 times:
How much more likely gay and transgender youth are to attempt suicide if they are rejected by their families in adolescence compared to if they are not rejected by their family.

They are also 5.9 times as likely to have experienced depression, 3.4 times as likely to have used illicit drugs, and 3.4 times as likely to have had unprotected sex.

Source

Mistreatment of Intersexed People in the USA : 1620-1966

The official title is Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America, 1620–1960 E.Reis Journal of American History Sept 2005 pp 411-441, but it's a sordid tale of consistent mistreatment over centuries. In fact, Intersexed people were in many ways treated more humanely in 1750 than 1950.

This essay explores the changing definitions and perceptions of “hermaphrodites” from the colonial period to the early twentieth century.3 Over the course of the three centuries, most medical observers would have agreed that hermaphrodites did not exist in the human species and that patients with confused or ambiguous external and internal reproductive organs were not really hermaphrodites, but cases of “mistaken sex.” Indeed, by the mid-twentieth century, “corrective” surgery for such anatomical ambiguity became routine in this country, to make infants’ genitalia look “normal” and match their supposed “true sex.” But this essay is concerned less with the medical history of surgical procedures or the professional history of doctors than with the cultural history of how American doctors and laypeople regarded bodies and identities that fell outside their conceptual boundaries of normal female and male categories. What did it mean to be male or female? Who had authority to answer that question, and what were the criteria?

A question that still remains open today.

Sex is social and historical, in large part a construction whose contours and boundaries have been imposed rather than simply discovered. Consider the analogy of race. Just as we think about race in black-and-white terms in the United States, so too we think about sex in exacting binary terms. African Americans, for example, have been considered “black” on the basis of the “one-drop” rule (any known African ancestry), which sought to define and police the boundaries between blacks and whites in the interest of white racial “purity” and supremacy. Although racism and discrimination persist, the one-drop rule has disappeared in the face of more just attitudes and practices, as Americans have redefined the color line in the United States in the previous half century. Today “multiracial” is an accepted identifier employed by increasing numbers to add nuance and complexity to our formerly rigid understanding of race.
Will a more complex understanding and classification of sex find similar respectability?
How distinct are the boundaries of sex? And how should those with nonconforming bodies be treated? How small must an infant’s penis be before a doctor decides the child should be surgically remade as a girl? Does an unusually large clitoris transform a girl into a boy? Is someone with a penis and a uterus male or female? What about a person with breasts and testicles? Where do we place those who have both XX and XY chromosomes in this rigid taxonomy of sex? Intersex bodies have always existed, but they have been rendered invalid and invisible historically, for the boundaries of personhood have forced them into a conventional bipolar male/female division

I identify as female and always have. Biologically problematic, more F than M (with the medical reports to prove it), but much as I would like to be 100% F, I'm not. Biologically. That's me though. There are many IS people who do not identify with either sex (and quite a few non-IS people too). Just because I fit neatly into one binary box (psychologically anyway), I don't see why others should be compelled to when it's not appropriate for them.

The insistence on a strict male/female dichotomy should not be understood as a medical conspiracy, though doctors played an enormous role in delineating the boundaries between the two sexes and bestowing on that division the imprimatur of science. Those living with ambiguous bodies generally shared the binary ideal and sought to blend in, if only because survival demanded it. Forced to choose a sex, however, they did not always adhere to the sex they chose. Nor did they always endorse or accept doctors’ suggestions for surgical correction, particularly when such surgery required an adult to change gender.
...
Many children thus altered never felt at home in their assigned sex. Some never knew their medical history, as doctors advised parents and relatives to keep the matter secret. When they found out, some changed genders as adults. Others struggled to accommodate life with surgically altered sexual organs that had been severely compromised as well as with a deep sense of shame induced by enforced secrecy.
Intersex activists are currently challenging Money’s presumptions and protocols about “normalizing” procedures. As Alice Dreger, chair of the Board of Directors of the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA), put it, “Why perform irreversible surgeries that risk sensation, fertility, continence, comfort, and life without a medical reason?” ISNA’s efforts are making headway, but they are far from complete. At a recent meeting of the Section on Urology of the American Academy of Pediatrics, several leaders in the field cautioned against invasive cosmetic surgeries, while others continued to advocate early aggressive operations

ISNA disbanded shortly after this article was written. Some pediatricians continue to advocate for early intervention, due to the stigma, bullying and persecution those with visibly different bodies endure in childhood. Those who object to their arbitrarily assigned sex are labelled "mentally ill" so can safely be ignored, as well as ostracised and castigated as morally corrupt by much of organised religion.

Using as guides both Jewish Talmudic law and canon and civil law influenced by ancient Latin sources, early European medical manuals typically addressed the legal issues that hermaphrodites or their parents might have faced. All such precedents required that a hermaphrodite choose one sex. For example, the 1741 English treatise A Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites, by the physician James Parsons, outlined the standard regulations. Despite his contention that human hermaphrodites did not exist, Parsons listed each possible legal question, from whether a hermaphrodite should be given a male or female name at birth to whether or not a hermaphrodite should be allowed to marry or divorce. The answers to most questions required that hermaphrodites choose one sex. Parsons stated unequivocally: “Predominancy of Sex . . . ought to be regarded; but if the Sexes seem equal, the Choice is left to the Hermaphrodite.”
Unlike later medical practitioners, Parsons was willing to entrust this vital decision to laypeople

See what I mean when I said "Intersexed people were in many ways treated more humanely in 1750 than 1950". I meant it. It's literally true.

In previous posts, I've mentioned 5ARD and 17BHDD - both of which can cause an apparent "natural sex change" in some cases. Such changes do not alter gender identity, so transsexuality can either be cured, or caused, by such a change.

I've also mentioned Vitiligo, an auto-immune disease that attacks melanotic cells, leading to skin bleaching. The most famous (though not well-known) case is that of Michael Jackson.

There's still a marked resistance in the USA to the idea that such things can be. Ask nearly anyone, they'll tell you that Michael Jackson voluntarily changed his appearance, though if you ask them how skin can be bleached like that, they can't tell you. Because no such medical procedure exists.

As if individuals’ shifting back and forth between the genders at will was not bad enough, doctors reported startling cases of people suddenly, and involuntarily, changing their sex. In 1850 a Boston medical journal reported the case of a fourteen year-old who had been born female and christened Rebecca, but whose body altered into that of a boy. His father successfully petitioned the court to have the child’s name changed to William. Similarly, the Medical Examiner in 1839 reported the mysterious masculinization of an eighteen-year-old woman. At her birth, there had been some doubt as to the girl’s sex, but the “gossiping females” present at her birth decided that her organs of generation looked more female than male. Although as a child she engaged in “manly sports and the labours of the field,” she wore female attire and lived as “Elizabeth.” When she turned eighteen, however, her body changed. She was nearly six feet tall and had begun to grow a beard. Old enough to make her own decisions about sexuality, she abandoned her old name and female identity, lived as a man, and married a woman.

The unnerving possibility that individuals could suddenly change sex paralleled the early national preoccupation with race, racial categories, and the possibility of changing racial identity. In the early republic, as Americans sought to find social and political order in their unsettled national life, the potential transmutation of race raised serious questions. In 1796 Henry Moss had become a celebrity widely recognized in print as an American-born man of African descent who in middle age somehow turned white. Another man, James, from Charles County, Maryland, lived for fifteen years “a black or very dark mulatto colour,” and then white spots began to appear. Gradually increasing, the spots grew until he had become entirely white, except for a few lingering dark spots on his cheekbones. His child, the article duly noted, was born with white spots, suggesting that the offspring’s transformation might come soon.

Classical signs of 5ARD or 17BHDD, and Vitiligo respectively. These conditions are not new. They were always in the general population, and even better known in 1796 than they are today.

Would "Rebecca" or "Elizabeth" be treated with such humanity today? Well, not in Ohio. Or Tennessee. Or Kansas. Or parts of Texas. As for Henry Moss - just look at the way Michael Jackson was treated as "Whacko Jacko" during his pain-wracked life (he had Lupus too, a disease often found in conjunction with Vitiligo in Black Americans).

We've come a long way in 200 years. Backwards.

And I'm doing my darndest, in this blog, with these articles, to swim against the tide of increasing bigotry and irrationality, often associated with a well-financed and highly profitable organised religion that has nothing to do with Christ's teachings, or often used as a political power source by demagogues of the far right, and by some on the left too. All too many.

I rely on exposing the facts, using references, logic, knowledge, rationality. Not telling people what to think, just laying the data before them, giving sources, and letting them make up their own minds.

In today's political climate, my approach is distinctly unfashionable, and it can get pretty lonely here at times. Meh. I volunteered. I was drafted into the whole sex-change thing, but the activism in the USA, as opposed to Australia where I live, that's just me being me. I cannot stand blatant injustice, never could, and as a child it got me into plenty of hot water. I have a choice to do this, or not to. I choose to do it, and the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. I guess you could say that I have a dream.

Transsexuals and the phantom penis

Further to my previous post of a few days ago, the transcript of an ABC Science Show program from 2007 on the subject : Transsexuals and the phantom penis - Science Show - 3 March 2007

But it is curious that most normal people who have carcinoma of the penis, which is not rare, and they have an amputation of the penis as a life saving measure, a majority of them, maybe about 80%, 85% of them, experience a phantom penis, including phantom erections. This is well known. Since this chap is saying his penis doesn't belong to him in the first place, what if his penis is amputated because he wants to become a woman, what happens then?

The answer is the majority of them don't experience a phantom penis. What's amazing is that your body image, which includes your genitals, is at least in part programmed by genes and your brain is hard-wired to incorporate the genitals as part of your body image. Even more amazing is the observation that women who undergo transgender sexual surgery who acquired an artificial penis, a majority of them since early childhood have experienced a phantom penis. This is absolutely extraordinary because it means that each of us has a brain-based body image which is detailed down to the fine anatomy, including your genitals.

If your brain body image does not match...normally your brain body image and your external morphology are synchronised in early development through hormones, through genetic mechanisms. If this gets uncoupled and they aren't in synchrony you end up with a body image that's morphologically male, so they experience a phantom penis. What's amazing is that all these years of culture being raised as a woman, as a girl, and even seeing that they don't have a penis does not correct this body image. This shows that even though your body image is extremely malleable, as we have shown with phantom limbs and mirrors and that sort of thing, it also turns out that there's a strong genetic contribution to your body image. This has, of course, great implications for understanding how your brain represents sexual behaviour and constructs body image.

The bit about "phantom limbs and mirrors", where the psychological distress can be alleviated by the use of mirrors "restoring" missing limbs in a reflection, might explain another phenomenon (according to a correspondent who wishes to remain anonymous).

The almost universal (80%) practice amongst trans people of cross-dressing prior to transition. By cross-dressing and then looking at one's reflection in a mirror, it might (I emphasise might) activate the same kind of soothing mechanism found when amputees see reflections of themselves that appear to cure their problem.

As an aside....I never cross-dressed, the phrase "putting lipstick on a pig" comes to mind as being appropriate. But I didn't even do it for fancy-dress parties, in fact I fanatically avoided even coloured shirts or patterned ties. Nothing even partly reminiscent of femininity.

Much as an acute alcoholic might fanatically avoid even a low-alcohol beer. I couldn't do it because then I wouldn't have been able to stop. Maintaining the "boy act" was so hard, the whole facade would have shattered, leaving me helpless to avoid a transition I was terrified of.

46XX, CAH, Masculinised Genitalia and Gender Assignment

From Review of Outcome Information in 46,XX Patients with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia Assigned/Reared Male: What Does It Say about Gender Assignment? P.A. Lee and C.P. Hou International Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology Volume 2010 (2010), Article ID 982025

There is ample historical verification of 46,XX congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) patients being born with essentially male genitalia while outcome information is scant. Prior to glucocorticoid therapy, most patients died very young from adrenal insufficiency. Most available reports from later childhood, contain little information concerning sexual identity. Reports on older individuals lack adequate information about sexual identity and quality of life. The difficulty in assessing the relative impact of multiple dynamic environmental factors on the development of sexual identity, self- and body esteem and overall adjustment to life is clear. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether those infants whose masculine genitalia at birth resulted in an initial male assignment would have enjoyed a better adult outcome had they been allowed to remain male rather than the female reassignment that most received. Further, one could ask whether a male sex of rearing should be considered in 46,XX CAH infants with male external genitalia. After reviewing available literature, we conclude that because those extremely virlized 46,XX CAH patients who were reared male with healthy social support demonstrated satisfactory levels of social and sexual function as adults a male sex assignment should be considered in these types of infants when social and cultural environment are supportive.

How about raising them as their apparent sex, with no surgical intervention until they are competent to consent? And being prepared to switch sex of rearing as soon as it becomes obvious our initial guess was wrong?

My observation in Intersex support groups dealing with CAH is that 9 out of 10 self-identify as female. But that means 1 in 10 do not, even if they had been subject to surgery while helpless infants.

Some are glad to have had clitoral reduction surgery; others are not, they're devastated. The point is, it should be their decision, as adults or as teens.

I know I'm being tediously repetitious. But how many reports, studies, narratives from Intersexed people, medical and scientific papers will it take to prohibit surgery without consent, and permit surgery with consent?

The Brain-Body Map and other Neurological Issues

From a Pop-Sci article by V S Ramachandran in the UK Telegraph:

A 70-year-old engineer who has just retired confesses that he has had a life-long urge to have his left arm amputated below the elbow. He has the arm removed and feels much better.

Another man loses his arm in a car accident, but still feel its ghostly presence; this phantom limb is clenched in a painfully awkward position.

A third man, a student of mine, makes a remarkable recovery from a coma, only to become convinced that his mother and father are impostors.

All three case studies are fascinating. Yet as I argue in my new book, The Tell-Tale Brain, they can also teach us a great deal about how the brain does its near-miraculous work.

This is an organ of staggering complexity: a 3lb lump of jelly that can contemplate the meaning of infinity, the idea of God, and even its own existence.
...
One principle that often crops up is the importance of evolution, especially the notion that a brain mechanism that evolved for one function can be hijacked for another. As the great biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky said, "Nothing in biology makes any sense except in the light of evolution."

Take that 70-year-old engineer who wanted to amputate his arm – a classic case of apotemnophilia [a neurological disorder in which a sane and rational individual wants a healthy limb or limbs to be amputated].

Many far-fetched Freudian ideas have been proposed to explain this condition (including the idea that the amputation stump would resemble a large penis). But the real answer is genetic. It turns out that the right hemisphere of the brain contains a complete representation of your body – a genetically specified "body image".

Our brain-imaging experiments showed that with this particular patient, the hand on this genetic map was missing – so the sensory impulses from the arm had nowhere to go to, and the patient experienced it as "over-present". Similar changes in body images might even explain the desire that transsexuals have to have their penis amputated.

Phantom limbs [the limb has been removed, but the patient feels its presence] are more common – and in some cases, the ghostly arm is paralysed, and fixed in a very painful position.

My comment:
This also provides an explanation for why Trans people sometimes require surgery, and sometimes do not.

We know that Transsexuality is caused by a partly cross-sexed brain. There's enough evidence from autopsies, fMRI scans and various tests of hearing, sense of smell etc (all are sexually differentiated) to prove the anatomical difference.

The conditions vary though, some parts of the brain are always affected, others may or may not be. If the part determining the "body map" is affected, then surgery will be as necessary as re-attachment would be for a man whose genitalia was severed in an accident. Not to have it would cause severe psychological distress, and an unacceptable risk of suicide.

That trans women do not report the same rate of "phantom penis syndrome" after genital reconstruction surgery as men do after castration as part of anti-cancer treatment provides additional evidence, as does the many reports of "phantom penis syndrome" in pre-operative trans men.

MRI imaging of trans people who require surgery, and those who do not, could well locate more precisely the area of the brain concerned.

There's a few minor errors in the article - in general, genital reconstruction for trans women doesn't involve penile amputation, just re-shaping an outie to an innie. And the brain's neuro-anatomy isn't "genetic" as such, anomalies in the hormonal environment in the womb can re-program development so it doesn't follow the usual pattern as laid down by the genes - but otherwise correct.

It's worth noting that Professor Vilayanur S. Ramachandran has done more research in this precise area than any other scientist in the world, and is the director of the Center for the Brain at the University of California, San Diego.

Construction with Quadrotor Teams

Yes, only a proof of principle. A lab demonstration, with pre-packaged pre-fabricated parts, designed to be trivially easy to put together.

Nonetheless... the shape of things to come. Quadrotors or Hexrotors have certain fundamentals dictated by the science of fluid flow and aerodynamics. While power storage technology will get better, computation ability will improve, and there's a little room for materials science to make things lighter and stronger... I don't see much change to the basic concept from here.

A glimpse of the future, with swarms of co-operating robotic insects building useful things, often in hostile environments. Just not when the wind's too variable, or too strong. Indoors is best. Factories may soon resemble beehives.

Scarred for Life

In the last few days, I've had some pain in my upper-right abdomen, apparently the liver. With the unusual doses of hormones I'm on, liver stress is a real possibility, so this kind of thing can't be left too long.

My regular GP isn't available until February, so I saw my alternate. Good value, by the way, and clueful about IS issues to a much higher than average degree.

Anyway, he examined my abdomen for the first time. I'm used to the reaction whenever a medic does that. I have quite a scar, from bikini line to breastbone, where I was told they were going to take my gallbladder out. That's all.

His eyes widened when he saw it.

Yes, it's in the wrong place, and also the wrong orientation, and also at least three times too big, even for surgery circa 1980. He even asked me if I was sure that my gallbladder had been removed, the pain I had was consistent with a gallbladder problem.

It was - they even gave me the gallbladder-shaped mass of cholesterol and calcium carbonate that they'd removed from it, it was absolutely full of matchead-sized stones, all fused together. Ultrasounds in 2005 confirmed a distinct lack of gallbaddery substance.

It looks like the problem is adhesions, my abdomen appears to be full of them, even now. I'm getting another ultrasound to be certain, but the pain has diminished considerably, and the type of pain is consistent with the pain I used to get. I thought that after 32 years had passed, the problem would have resolved, but he told me that as long as I had the scar externally visible, I'd have the same kind of thing internally too.

The pathologists reports of exactly what structures were removed from my abdomen back in 1979 are missing. Not unusual in cases where someone's internal anatomy doesn't quite match their external appearance. It was thought at the time that informing the patient would risk causing serious psychological damage.

Previous ultrasounds of my abdomen in 2005 showed no clue - everything's healed. I just have some scars internally that will be there till the day I die.

The Joys of Intersex.

BS Bingo

Example Bingo card, for use in meetings especially regarding project management.

Best of Breed	Big Picture	Retention	Prioritized	Up to speed
Conversion	Project	Mindset	Cost	Policy[ies]
Turnkey	Search Engine Optimization	BULLSHIT BINGO (free square)	Challenge[s]	Brain Storm / Mind Shower
Win-win	Reactivation	Band-aid	Level Set	Issues
Basically	Go Public	High-Level	Non-Traditional Management	Opportunity

To make your own set of cards, just visit Bullshit Bingo [Random!]. Print them out, and there you go.

Fun and Games with RNA

How does a Pirate sew his genes? With ArrrrNA.

So without further ado, from Carnegie-Mellon University, and Stanford University,Why RNA | EteRNA.

By playing EteRNA, you will participate in creating the first large-scale library of synthetic RNA designs. Your efforts will help reveal new principles for designing RNA-based switches and nanomachines -- new systems for seeking and eventually controlling living cells and disease-causing viruses. By interacting with thousands of players and learning from real experimental feedback, you will be pioneering a completely new way to do science. Join the global laboratory!
...
Challenge puzzles ask you to design RNA sequences that fold up into a target shape on your computer, similar to previous scientific discovery games such as Foldit. Many of these puzzles could be solved by existing computer programs. So why are you working on them? Two reasons. First, these puzzles provide a crucial training ground that bridges the gap between the tutorials and the Lab. Second, many existing computer programs take a huge amount of time to solve large RNAs, and you are very likely to find better, faster ways. Consider publishing your solution method, which we can code up as a ‘bot’ and test against existing computer programs.

Just a few minutes play revealed some effective strategies. For example, two strings, GGG and CCC will get together to form GC,GC,GC pairs, but these may get out of alignment, so you get G-, GC, GC, -C. If however you have two strings, GCG and CGC, they pretty much have to form GC,CG,GC. You can use these as "anchors" to force areas with weaker bonds to line up the way you want them.

That's as clear as mud. The best thing to do is have a look at the explanation, then start with the basic tutorial. If you can play Tetris, or Scrabble, you can play this game.

Curtsy to Ryan Radclyffe-Hall, who put me on to this one.

The Gendered Self - A Personal View

From Anne Vitale's e-book, the Gendered Self : Further Commentary on the Transsexual Phenomenon ($5.95 USD and worth a lot more)

Given the nature of the condition and the ability of some children to conceal it, it may be possible that most children with gender dysphoria are never diagnosed as such. The undiagnosed children cope by sticking rigorously to the role expected of them.
...
Little is known about gender dysphoric boys who privately struggle to fit into their expected gender role. With no apparent problem, (many adult GID clients report being exceptionally well behaved as children) they simply go unobserved by clinicians studying gender variant behavior. Yet from interviewing adults with gender dysphoria, I can report that the problem, although lacking the current intensity, was as real for them then as it is now.

The underlying feelings most often stated were of detachment and confusion, a sense of not really fitting in, even though family and teachers consistently rewarded them for their artificially affected behavior. One of the most common areas of confusion was the original sex assignment process itself. Although adults may think it simplistic, many children are completely perplexed as to why some children are assigned as boys and others as girls.

Given a tendency toward privacy and modesty in our society, many children, especially those without siblings, often have no way of knowing that there is a physical difference between themselves and those differently assigned

Andrea, a 35-year-old male-to-female, post-operative transsexual recalls that she was completely perplexed over her assignment as male until at age seven her sister was born. While watching her mother change her sister’s diaper, she learned for the first time that her assignment as a boy was based on a real physical difference. Although it cleared up part of the confusion, she realized even at that early age that her identity concerns were far more complicated and serious then she had first thought.

It is common for clients to report thinking in childhood that gender assignment was based on parental preference and therefore open for redress. Girls are especially aggressive in their insistence that they are really boys. Indeed, many are so insistent that they go on to act for all intents and purposes as though they are boys, a pattern they carry into adulthood.

For cloistered gender dysphoric boys it was in the area of peers and activities, especially sports, that the problem was most noticeable. Unable or uninterested in competing in organized boys’ activities and having been shuffled decidedly away from playing with the girls, many became reclusive. To add to their confusion, and counter to behavior typically reported in openly gender dysphoric boys, many cloistered boys actually preferred solo play with boys’ toys and had little or no interest in girls’ toys. For example, I have heard more than one long-time post-op male-to-female transsexual speak fondly of having spent countless hours playing with an Erector Set or a Lionel model train set-up that their father had helped them build. Others described designing and making detailed model airplanes, race cars and sailing ships. The more academic of this group report little or no interest in sports and rough-and-tumble play. To avoid castigation from their peers, they report spending a lot of time reading and studying.

My close family would instantly recognise that stereotype as being a perfect description of me when young.

I'll quote two segments from previous posts of mine, one poetic, one autobiographical, that shows just how accurate Dr Vitale's description is. No wonder I was considered an "open and shut case", despite the "hormonal issues that perplexed the situation" as an examining psychiatrist put it.

1967
====

Pardon Me.
I need to see someone.
I don't know who decides these things.
But you see, there's been a silly mistake.
I didn't complain before
But I'm now nearly 10.
It's getting really late.
I don't mind being in Loddon House
Though Thames or Kennet are OK too.
If I have to change
To either, I don't mind.
And as for A Class well,
I'm good at maths.
No complaints.
But you see
They put in me in the Boys
And Boy things just aren't me.
The Boy clothes I wear
Mean Girls won't play with me.
I'm so alone,
I spend my playtime
In the Library
Alone
Different
Lonely
I don't fit in
At all.
There's been a mistake, you see.
I know my parents
Wanted a Boy.
Maybe that's why it was done
The assignment incorrect
To Boy and not to Girl.
A Natural mistake
To make
No blame.
But haven't I been good?
Done everything required?
Never been naughty
Over much.
I think I've earned the right
To go in with the Girls
And soon
Before my teens begin.
I need to see
Someone in charge
Who decides these things.
Please help.

You know you're in a bad way when you can't read the last few lines of a poem you yourself wrote, without tearing up. Not for yourself, but for all the other earnest young pre-teen girls today, doing their best to be biddable and polite, with a naive faith in the ability of the kindly adults around them to fix the situation.

In 1967... the attempted "fix" might have meant electro-convulsive therapy, and possibly removing parts of the brain.... certainly "operant conditioning" using rewards and punishments... torture by any other name. Not the Abu Ghraib Guantanamo faux-torture, actual electrodes and actual beatings. I didn't know that then, I just thought that when things became obvious in my teens there would be some upheaval and readjustment, that's all. Inconvenience.

Now for the second part.

Up until age 5, I was a child. No real concept of gender.

At 6, I went to school, and noticed something was wrong. I was dressed as a boy, I looked like a boy, but I didn't think like "other boys". I still liked toy guns, and Meccano rather than dolls, but I was different.

At 7, I knew I wasn't a boy, but didn't know what I was. I thought boys were puerile, and girls too silly and sissy. A classic Tomboy in retrospect.

At 8, I got to play hopscotch with other girls, and I felt at home. They thought like I did, they cried like I did. I still didn't see myself as more than an honourary girl though. Even if my favourite toy car was Lady Penelope's pink Rolls-Royce.

At 9, more by a process of elimination than anything else, I realised I was female. Boys could just as well have been an alien species. Girls were just like me, in feelings and values.

At 10, I was in a boys boarding school then, and I was able to make up boardgames of astounding complexity when it rained. I had my own secret garden in the nearby woods, with flowerbeds I'd planted. I could sit and read amidst the flowers, and was terribly happy. It was then I picked the name Zoe, and planned what I was going to do with my life. I wanted children, a husband, the white picket fence etc, but also to be a Rocket Scientist and to travel the world, things that Wives and Mothers Just Did Not Do in the 60's.

Even though it had been obvious since age 7 that I’d never be “svelte” or “petite”, that I’d be the girl “with the wonderful personality”. I didn’t cry about that – much. And not where anyone could see me. I was more worried about the practical problems I'd be having when I started having a female puberty. And vaguely concerned that boys didn't interest me at all. I was no naive I thought that was part of the package of being a girl. Was I a defective one?

It came as a terrible shock when I learnt that boys and girls are born looking different, and that my body was boy.

I dislike being an instance of a stereotype, but reality is, whether I like it or not.

"Damn! I have recently learned that I am
But a creature that moves
In predestinate grooves.
I'm not even a bus. I'm a tram."

Although I'm technically Intersexed, the whole "natural sex change" business yada yada - my childhood was indistinguishable from that of other transsexual women. I'm both TS and IS. Or IS and formerly TS.

From the Author's page:

Based on the author's first hand experience in treating over 500 gender dysphoric individuals over the last quarter century, The Gendered Self is the story of what it is like to be born into and to live out one's life as a transsexual in a cissexual world.

The book starts by showing how the developing brain is genderized in utero and how that process can go awry leaving affected individuals sex/gender incongruent.

The author goes on to show that although hormonal and surgical means is the current treatment of choice for sex/gender incongruency, we have come to learn that with Genital Reassignment Surgery life takes a turn wherein the individual is permanently consigned to a parallel universe: not male, not female but a bio-sociological combination of both. It is a world where the absurd becomes ordinary and the ordinary becomes absurd. Transsexualism is a life long existential dilemma that challenges the very nature of psychological survival. Nietzsche famously said that "what does not kill you makes you stronger". As The Gendered Self shows, surviving transsexualism and living a meaningful life is certainly a testament to that.

A final word. Something I wrote three years ago.

Something that illustrates how "It is a world where the absurd becomes ordinary and the ordinary becomes absurd."

You get used to it. You get too used to it. You tell yourself that the situation is unusual, you have to make allowances, and if you're not very careful, you get to believe that you deserve it, because of the myriad little ways you get humiliated or mistreated in every country on Earth. Some places, name change is trivial. Other places, it requires a court hearing, and a bigoted judge can refuse you permission simply because he doesn't approve of "that kind of thing". Some places, changing birth certificate is trivial if you're post op. Some places it's even possible if pre-op. Some places it's impossible. Some places it's possible even if pre-op, but not if you're married (like the UK). It's Legal Insanity.

You tell yourself that compared with people with Lung cancer, you have it easy. But the comparison is unjust: for changing sex, while psychologically uniquely stressful and medically risky, is not the problem. The problem is not even the violence, for anyone can be unlucky (Ok, so you're seventeen times as likely to be unlucky, so maybe it's a problem after all). The problem is those who argue that you're insane (so don't deserve treatment), or not insane (so don't deserve treatment). That you're as mad as a meataxe, as much as a psychotic schizophrenic, yet unlike a psychotic schizophrenic don't qualify as disabled under the "Americans with Disabilities Act", because there's a special exemptive clause just for your condition (see Donna Rose Dec 20 2007 8:30am). That you're gay, especially if attracted to the opposite sex, but don't qualify for legal protection under any clauses that protect gays in any event. That in order to get treatment for your insanity, you must get two specialist psychiatrists to put their reputations on the line, in writing, to say that you're sane. You get used to the inconsistency. If there's a disadvantage, it applies, if there's a mitigation, it doesn't.

You become so used to making allowance for others feelings - for all you want to do is have something like a normal life too - that in order to save minor inconvenience or some disquiet in others, you accept the most objectively appalling treatment of yourself. Treated in so many ways - though which ones depend on where you are - as a 4th class citizen, unless you make a conscious effort not to, you believe that you are a 3rd class citizen who just has to put up with a few inconveniences.

Instead of the 2nd class citizen you are because you're a woman. Actually, come to think of it, maybe I shouldn't accept that state of affairs either as "normal", just because it has been since time immemorial.

"The Gendered Self may be purchased through Lulu.com. It is available immediately as a PDF file download for $5.99 USD or in paperback for $14.99 USD. eReader formats to be available soon."

One thing though about Transition. Even if you don't get a natural assist from a weird metabolism - it's easier than the alternative.