In 2016, a controversial bill was signed in Georgia, banning transgender individuals from using restrooms designated for the sex with which they identify. In the wake of this legislation, Between the (Gender) Lines: The Science of Transgender Identity explored what was known at the time about transgender identity, discussing scientific evidence for its biological bases, as well as the social and psychological ramifications of binary gender classifications. Regrettably, both the text and the figures in this article were being abused by those seeking to support their own beliefs. As such, we decided to remove this article in 2021 to prevent its further misappropriation by individuals and groups seeking to oversimplify this complex subject and promote views that lack a scientific basis.
We still believe in the value of rigorous scientific research about transgender identity and encourage you to read the published, peer-reviewed studies that we cited in the original article if you are interested in learning more about this topic (linked below):
- Transsexuality among twins: Identity concordance, transition, rearing, and orientation
- A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality
- Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus
- A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity
- Changing your sex changes your brain: influence of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure
- Regional gray matter variation in male-to-female transsexualism
- White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormone treatment: A diffusion tensor imaging study
- The (CA)n polymorphism of ERβ gene is associated with FtM Transsexualism
- Should transvestic fetishism be classified in DSM 5? Recommendations from the WPATH consensus process for revision of the diagnosis of transvestic fetishism
We also encourage you to explore additional resources on this topic:
- For a SITN blog article discussing sex determination, check out “I’m XY and I Know It”: Sex determination systems 101
- For a quantitative view of transgenderism in the US, take a look at this analysis from Times Union
- For a review of discrimination against transgender persons, see this report from the National Center for Transgender Equality
- For a more complete discussion on queer acronyms, see this description from BBC news
- For an in-depth look at how disagreements over restroom usage has shaped policy, check out this Politico article
Sincerely,
The SITN editorial team
thanks, it was a useful post for lgbti+ rights.
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>”In 1995 and 2000, two independent teams of researchers decided to examine a region of the brain called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis…”
Note these were not independent teams, they were largely the same team, at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research. The author lists were (Zhou, Hofman, Gooren and Swaab, 1995) and (Kruijver, Zhou, Pool, Hofman, Gooren, and Swaab, 2000).
Katherine J. Wu, Really nice blog. Thanks for sharing with us. I appreciate your efforts.
This is an embarrassment as a publication in any context: the creationism of being “assigned” a sex “prior to birth”; the sly segues between sex and gender in the text, purposefully confusing the two; the absolute nonsense conflation between being “born” a certain way, feeling a certain way, and being genetically a certain way. And so much more. An embarrassment by any standards, but on Harvard’s site, in a science column? Shame.
Didn’t I respond to this comment from you about 12 months ago?
If you read this article critically, you will note that it is full of phrases like “thought to be”, “tend to be”, etc. This equivocal language means that no conclusions can be drawn because we don’t have enough information. Moreover, the article accepts as factual statements that are arguably mere social justice movement assertions. For example, the idea that gender is “assigned” at birth by a “third party” carries with it two claims within it, neither of which is supported by facts. First is the tacit assumption that the highly subjective redefinition of the word “gender” as put forward by social activists is valid. Up until the time that social activism entered the picture, the definition of gender and biological sex were one and the same. Therefore, no one was “assigned” a gender at birth. Your genitals were your gender. If later in life a biological female wanted to behave like a male, it didn’t changer their gender, it was simply an expression of their personal preferences. Gender advocacy politics has declared that gender would no longer mean what it had meant throughout human history, but would henceforward elevate the subjective feelings of individuals to the level of a formal definition of gender. This “bait and switch” on definitions is a classic technique to illegitimately attack science. Creationists, for example, attempt to redefine the word “evolution” to mean something entirely different that is more easily “debunked” by their junk science.
There are many, many questions, scientific and ethical, that remain unanswered yet we are plunging ahead with “treatments”. Here are just a few:
1. On the question of whether transgenderism is genetically based, all that can be said at the moment is that studies of identical twins, it “more often” turns out that they are both transgender than is the case with fraternal twins. Tantalizing, but inconclusive.
2. If it is genetically based, is it a benign mutation or a genetic defect? That is both a philosophical/ethical question and scientific one. If the claim is that it is benign, what is the evolutionary advantage it confers, if any?
3. If it is a genetic defect, what is the rationale for treating the physical body rather than the brain to resolve the issue? Is it an embryological/developmental process that could be corrected in the womb?
4. Is it the result of hormonal pollution in the environment causing developmental abnormalities?
5. If it is genetic, is it also heritable?
The unanswered questions are legion but that hasn’t stopped us from confidently, and in my view, grossly prematurely, moving forward with drastic “treatment” protocols that involved extreme and irreversible changes to people’s bodies and lives. There is no doubt that some people have had good outcomes from this. But it is also not in doubt that many have not. My personal view is that we will one day look back on this period in the same way we now look back on the Eugenics movement. Eugenicists were (and are) supremely certain they were right and that they had the evidence to “prove” it. They were wrong. Latterly, psychologists and psychiatrists were certain that “recovered memory syndrome” was real. They were wrong but that didn’t prevent thousands of lives being ruined and families being destroyed. I am not saying with all of this that transgenderism isn’t real. I’m saying we don’t know enough to be doing what we are doing and we are letting social justice advocacy dictate our better judgement well in advance of the facts.
I refer to your post 4 December 2020, but first lets be clear that there is word “transgenderism”. This word with the usage of ‘ism’ is used by people and groups opposed to transgender to imply a political movement, not a medical condition i.e. communism, socialism, ect, Transgender people who transition have gender dysphoria and transitioning helps to ease their symptoms. Transgender is an adjective i.e. the state of being transgender rather then is transgenderism.
You raised that on the question of whether being transgender is genetically based and cited the study conducted with identical twins. The transgender twin study you are referring was published in the 2013 International Journal of Transgender Health. This study along with many studies have suggested, amongst other variants, that genes could play a roll in a person being born transgender.
In 2018 a study at Hudson Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia, the Researchers identified variations in a handful of genes which are involved in a pathway that processes estrogen and androgen (including testosterone), the male and female sex hormones. The DNA from 380 transgender women (male-to-female transgender people) and found that certain ‘versions’ of 12 different genes were significantly over represented in transgender women, compared to non-transgender males.
As Prof Harley explained, “We propose these genetic variations could make some males less able to process androgen, causing the brain to develop differently – with areas that are less ‘masculine’ or more ‘feminine’ – which may contribute to gender dysphoria in transgender women.”
Further, in December 2019 a study was published titled, “The Use of Whole Exome Sequencing in a Cohort of Transgender Individuals to Identify Rare Genetic Variants”. The study used whole exome sequencing on the genomic DNA of trans men and trans women. The whole exome sequencing revealed 120,582 genetic variants. Eventually 21 variants in 19 genes were found to have associations with previously described estrogen receptor activated pathways of sexually dimorphic brain development. These variants were confirmed by Sanger Sequencing.
From here you have focused on your true object – to make transgender people out to be something less then human. To quote your words, “If it is genetically based, is it a benign mutation or a genetic defect?” I have real problems with your use of the word “mutation”. Transgender people are not mutants, benign (friendly) or otherwise, transgender people are humans. As for your use of the term “genetic defect”, as I have raised elsewhere in this forum Transgender people are not defective.
If transgender people are allowed to transition to their correct gender and live their lives free from discrimination, harassment, and violence because of their gender identity they can live happy and fulling lives. However, this brings me to your true objective and that is to stop or prevent transgender people from transiting.
To quote your words, “The unanswered questions are legion but that hasn’t stopped us from confidently, and in my view, grossly prematurely, moving forward with drastic “treatment” protocols that involved extreme and irreversible changes to people’s bodies and lives.” And “There is no doubt that some people have had good outcomes from this. But it is also not in doubt that many have not.”
There is plenty of easily assessable research demonstrating the positive outcomes from allowing transgender people to transition; however, other than biased comments base on pseudoscience there is no research that demonstrates the opposite is true.
The term ‘transgender’ is a relatively recent term. Coined in 1965, by Columbia University psychiatrist John F Oliven, to cover a broad spectrum of people whose sense of gender identity does not conform to that of their birth sex. While the term may be recent, the concept of transgender is as old as history. Throughout recorded, there has always been individuals who have lived their lives as members of a gender they were not born into, often risking ridicule at best- at worst, persecution which (using for post as just one example) continues into the 21st century.
And from this quote you reveal your own biases.
“From here you have focused on your true object – to make transgender people out to be something less then human. To quote your words, “If it is genetically based, is it a benign mutation or a genetic defect?” I have real problems with your use of the word “mutation”. Transgender people are not mutants, benign (friendly) or otherwise, transgender people are humans. As for your use of the term “genetic defect”, as I have raised elsewhere in this forum Transgender people are not defective.”
I have heard argument after arguement in favor of the trans belief that they are the gender they believe to be. Whether it’s comparisons of brain sections, DNA, estrogen levels or literally whatever straw they want to grasp at to prove their belief.
However, whenever the possibility of random mutation, or genetic defect are brought up, they clutch their pearls and shriek “How dare you!” Having a defect doesn’t make someone “less than human” that’s you attempting to put skeptics on the defensive with accusations of bigotry. A person with type 1 diabetes, Muscular Distophy, or schizophrenia have a defect but that doesn’t make them defective. Please stop throwing out accusations in a pathetic attempt to bully your detractors and skeptics into your way of thinking.
And while I’m here,
“There is plenty of easily assessable research demonstrating the positive outcomes from allowing transgender people to transition; however, other than biased comments base on pseudoscience there is no research that demonstrates the opposite is true.”
All studies that demonstrate a positive outcome from transitioning you view as reliable, yet any study to the contrary are automatically “based on pseudoscience” do you even hear yourself? Have you even looked at blogs, books, or YouTube channels made by people who have detransitioned? They exist.
If you are going to counter findings from peer reviewed research you need to format your arguments using referenced peer reviewed research, not just state your personal opinion and expect your personal opinion to be taken seriously as factual evidence. To make assertions based on your personal opinion, with a lack of contrary evidence, is merely an appeal to ignorance.
I’d second this except for wanting to point out that I think you may have fallen for the cheap trick of muddling the statistics on disorders or sexual development with the phenomenon of transgenderism. Most transgender people just like the rest of us are fully genetically unambiguously physically male or female. “Intersex” conditions (as they call them, because the term lends itself to the idea that there is a sliding scale of sexes where male and female are just the two extreme poles) and transgenderism are in reality two completely different and separate things, and the one cannot be used to explain the other.
There may of course be genetic studies which point to specific genetic variations devolving into gender dyshoric behaviour which I haven’t heard of and obviously twin studies showing elevated concordance are always interesting but as you say most of the published research is couched in phrases like “thought to be”, “tend to be” seems and so on and so on, indicating that really we just don’t know.
The current thinking seems to be that there are small areas of the brain that are in fact dimorphic. We’re talking about areas the size of a pin head. As such, being transgender is likely to be an intersex condition of the brain. One of the hints for this is that there are two testosterone surges during pregnancy, and they know that the first one causes intersex conditions in the gonads.
The hard part they currently have is marrying the different brain research that is being done on macro level features and these small features and resolve p possible conflicts.
This evidence is largely irrelevant to the question of transgenderism. While transgender people may have some biological indicators of the other sex, the question is whether a few indicators is enough to declare that they’re “a woman in a man’s body”.
Let’s say you’re Jim and you have Alzheimer’s. Eventually you lose your mind and you stop being the same person you were. Yet the rest of the world will still call you Jim and refer to you as if you were the same person you were before your condition overtook you. This indicates that your body, not just your mind, is a huge source of identity.
The same can be said for other damage done to the brain. In all instances we don’t declare someone to be a different person even if there is a huge personality change. The body is essential in identity.
So even if a transgender person may have the brain structure of the opposite biological sex that doesn’t mean they’re not still largely bound by their body when assuming an identity. Humans are a sum of their parts. Well, at least until the day we can free interchange mind and body.
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I’ve been looking at a few articles about similar issues. I was wondering, another article (in support of trans people) I read was talking how the brain differences among the sexes don’t definitely define sex either because the brain pieces sizes are simply the averages and there are many people who don’t fit (like women who don’t have the matching ‘female’ brain size even though they are cis and straight.) But the reason I’ve been looking at these is because I’m trying to understand the subsections of transgender like gender fluid, non binary, demi-, bigender, agender, etc. Does anyone know any solid places I can look for more info on those?