Response to article posted in LGBTQ Nation

Recent Studies

There has been more and more research that shows a similar trend. Transgender girls, even though ASSIGNED male at birth, have genetic and developmental characteristics of females. This includes such things as Index finger to ring finger length, size of hypothalamus, amount of white matter in the brain, even skeletal traits.

Testosterone Required

A common theory is that during the first two months of gestation, there isn't enough testosterone, there is too much estrogen, or there is androgen insensitivity that causes the fetus to masculinize. We all start out as female. During the first 8 to 12 weeks of gestation however, the male infant produces large amounts of testosterone which cause the formation of male traits. The hypothalamus gets larger, along with genitalia and even the skeletal structure. However, there are genetic traits that can cause the male to fail to produce enough testosterone, there are also genetic traits that disable the male body's ability to process the testosterone that is produced.

There are also things that can happen during this stage of pregnancy. The mother may have a history of miscarriage. From the 50s through the 80s, many women were given DES, which contains exceptionally high dosages of estrogen.

Transgender girls often have similar issues. Perhaps because of the nature of life on the frontier, homesteading, and need to be self-sufficient, many strong masculine women may have genetic markers that cause them to produce small amounts of testosterone which gives them a more masculine brain. There are also ways that the mother can end up with testosterone in their bloodstream, and there may be genetic traits that make transgender boys more sensitive to the small amount of testosterone they get.

The penis is the least reliable indicator because it takes the least amount of testosterone to produce soft tissue changes anytime during gestation. At one time, doctors would simply measure the penis and if it was too short, they would emasculate the baby (much like a cliterodectomy, and perform vaginoplasty. If there is too much clitorus, the vaginal canal would be routed into the bowel and the labia sewn shut. These surgeries, often performed at birth, under strict nondisclosure agreement, were followed by weekly injections of the appropriate hormones in hopes of making a "fixed" boy more masculine or a "fixed" girl more feminine, but this did not alter the nature of the brain.

Several studies have shown that transgender people of ALL ages tend to have brain characteristics that make them more like their gender identity than their anatomy between the legs. This is even more pronounced for children because they haven't yet produced the hormones associated with puberty.

This may also be part of evolution as a result of several factors. Urbanization and several wars fought with firearms would have caused more of the alpha males to be killed off during the wars, often before they had any children. In addition, urban culture made it easier for more feminine men to survive and thrive in professions such as accounting, investing, and crafts. Conversely, alpha males in an urban culture may have become too violent and aggressive to thrive in the tight social communities. The would end up in prisons or jails with criminal records.

Conversely, the death of so many men in these wars, meant that women had to support themselves through hard work and effort. Mothers who couldn't cut the hard physical labor and long hours would be unable to bear and raise children. This would have been especially true during the 19th century when women had to plow fields, chop wood, gather food, wrestle livestock, protect their farms from predators, and so on - all on their own.

In urban cultures, a feminine woman could survive for a while as a prostitute, but would quickly die of sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, common viruses would have killed more frail women, leaving the more tough and resiliant women to survive.