TransLife.net Transgender 101 - Medical

Most people want to know why transgender people are the way they are. Most people assume that there were family life problems growing up, like a lack of a father figure. Or perhaps trans people are simply confused. Well, more and more research is being done to determine the causes of gender and sexuality in the brain and genetics. Some of the findings are starting to point to a real medical reasoning instead of societal.

One of the first of the recent studies was done by a Dr. Swaab of the Netherlands. He took post-mortem brains and examined them slice by slice for differences in males and females. Eventually he came across one. He discovered a region of the brain called "the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis" or BSTc for short. It's a tiny structure in the hypothalamus of the brain that seems to be linked to our gender identity. This section is bigger in men than it is in women by about 44 percent. The amazing thing he's found is that in male-to-female transsexuals, the BSTc has female size, and in female-to-male transsexuals, it has male size. The size of this structure in the brain doesn't seem to be affected by hormonal changes, aside from perhaps during fetal development.

This research suggests that gender is determined in the brain pre-natally. However, the sample of transsexual brains was very small. It was limited to ten, mainly because it's very difficult to find undamaged post-mortem brain tissue. Because of the small sample, most view this research as interesting, but inconclusive. Research would need to be done on a larger scale and repeated before it would be considered conclusive.

Recently research has been conducted at UCLA. Dr. Eric Vilain has been researching human genetics and how they affect pre-natal development prior to hormones. He and his team have discovered 54 genes that link to gender. Prior to this discovery, it was believed that hormones did everything in distinguishing the body between males and females. However, these genes are activated before the SRY gene switches on. That's the gene responsible for the testosterone hormone wash in the Y chromosome.

Of the 54 genes, 18 were produced at higher levels in the male, and 36 were produced at higher levels in the female. This research could help to determine where transgender comes from. It may have everything to do with why transsexuals report feeling that they were born in the wrong body. However, as of now the research continues. Eventually we will have that answer.