Month: May 2022

We have been exploring the topic of TRANSPHOBIA for nearly two months. If you are just now joining our blog, it is important for you to go back to the beginning of this series of blogs which began April 3, 2022, to set a proper foundation, and read each blog in sequence in order to understand what will be discussed in this blog, and to be able to put it into proper context. We will be continuing our look at the book, “The Riddle of Gender”. It is extremely difficult to try and summarize a 369-page book in one simple blog. If that were possible, the book would have only been five pages long. What we are attempting to do is lift quotations from that book to better help us understand The Truth about trans issues. The book contains seven personal accounts (not including the author’s) of individuals intimately involved in trans issues. We will learn from their knowledge and experience. Some of this will become a bit technical at times, so please read carefully and with purpose to fully understand what is being said.

“An enormous quantity of man-made chemicals has been released into the environment since the chemical revolution began after World War II. According to researchers who have studied their effects, ‘many of these chemicals can disturb development of the endocrine system and of the organs that respond to endocrine signals in organisms indirectly exposed during prenatal and /or early postnatal life; effects of exposure during development are permanent and irreversible.’ Some scientists and transpeople argue that the buildup of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the environment has begun to produce the same kind of effects on human sexual differentiation that have already been observed in wildlife and laboratory animals. In this view, a previously rare collection of endocrine-mediated anomalies is becoming more common as a result of the bioaccumulation of these chemicals, many of which are stored in fat and transmitted to the developing fetus through the placenta in pregnancy.” “The strongest evidence for a possible biological basis for gender variance comes from research on the effects of the drug diethylstilbestrol (DES). DES is a synthetic estrogen developed in 1938. Between 1945 and 1970, DES and other synthetic hormones were prescribed to millions of pregnant women in the mistaken belief that they would help prevent miscarriages. DES was even included in vitamins given to pregnant women, and in animal feed. Use of DES during pregnancy was discontinued in the United States in 1971, when seven young women whose mothers had taken DES during pregnancy were found to be suffering from a rare vaginal cancer. Since then, research on animals and human epidemiological studies have proved that DES causes myriad health problems in both males and females exposed to the drug in the womb, including structural damage to the reproductive system. Animal research has also shown that DES and other estrogenic chemicals affect the development of sex-dimorphic brain structures and behavior in animals. Laboratory animals exposed to hormones at critical stages of development in utero exhibited behaviors associated with the other sex after birth. Only in recent years have some researchers begun to note higher-than-expected rates of transgenderism in DES sons and daughters. The moderators of an online discussion group for the XY children of DES mothers surveyed subscribers in 2002 and discovered that 36.5 percent of the forum’s members were either preoperative or postoperative transsexuals, while another 14.3 percent defined themselves as transgendered. An update taken on the five-year anniversary of the group showed that since 1999, between one-quarter and one-third of the members of the DES Sons Network had indicated that gender identity and/or sexuality issues were among their most significant concerns. These data have not yet found their way into the scientific literature, however, and the combined cohort studies of DES children have thus far failed to ask a single question related to gender identity. This epidemiologic failure baffles DES ‘sons’ who are now daughters and who are aware of the increasing public health concerns about chemicals that bind to the estrogen receptor in humans and animals. ‘There are millions of us who were exposed to DES. And millions more exposed to DDT, DDE, dioxin, and God knows whatever else is out there that is estrogenic,’ says Dr. Dana Beyer, a transgendered physician who serves as co-moderator of the DES Sons Network. ‘You look at DES and say, ‘If that can mimic estrogen, there must be other things out there. What are people eating? What are they exposed to in the water supply? Five million people were exposed to DES in this country alone. Globally, there are many millions more. And we’re still alive and kicking and suffering from the effects. Plus there probably will be third-generation effects and maybe fourth- and fifth-generation effects.’ Efforts to establish the etiology, or cause, of transsexuality and other forms of gender variance have most often focused on psychological rather than organic causes – this is not surprising, since gender identity disorders are classified as psychiatric, not medical, conditions. Many psychiatrists have attempted to root gender nonconformity in an unstable home environment, abusive or disturbed parents, gender confusion in the family, and other social factors. This line of research has not been very successful, however, as relatively few individuals who grow up in disturbed circumstances of any kind exhibit gender anomalies. As early as 1973, a psychologist working with cross-gendered clients noted that ‘there is no more psychopathology in the transsexual population than in the population at large, although societal response to the transsexual does impose almost insurmountable problems’.” “Some who believe that transgenderism and transsexuality are biologically based argue that the condition known as ‘gender identity disorder’ ought to be removed from the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] and reclassified as a congenital endocrinological disorder. ‘Somewhere the hormones that are secreted either by the brain or by the testes in response to the brain – the fetal hormonal system – are messed up. The end result is the morphological phenomenon, the brain anatomy or hypothalamic anatomy,’ says Dr. Dana Beyer. ‘Let’s figure out what’s going on here, rather than telling the parents the kid is crazy, delusional. The assumption is that you are psychotic or have some kind of mental abnormality. That’s the problem with the DSM. If we can make this a congenital anomaly just like cleft palate and cleft lip, or any of the physical intersex conditions, that shifts everybody’s perspective’.” “There needs to be an interdisciplinary gender studies. Because, so far, all of the theory and the research has come from a body of knowledge that has never had to be critical of its own foundational assumptions. And so it just becomes another vector for naturalizing particular kinds of ideological agendas. So I think that critically conscious transsexual or transgendered people, who can reveal the ideological constructions of the sex/gender systems, have this tremendous work in front of us. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to get funding to do that work.” George Jorgensen, Jr. “. . . turned for comfort to Paul de Kruif’s book, the Male Hormone, which points out that the chemical difference between testosterone and estradiol is merely a matter of four atoms of hydrogen and one atom of carbon. ‘If Dr. de Kruit’s chemical ratio was correct, it would seem then that the relationship was very close,’ Jorgensen writes in her autobiography. ‘That being so, I reasoned, there must be times when one could be so close to that physical dividing line that it would be difficult to determine on which side of the male-female dividing line one belonged’.” “. . . scientists learned that women’s urine contained the ‘male’ hormone, testosterone, and the urine of men contained the ‘female’ hormone, estrogen. Though the proportions were different, both sexes produced both male and female hormones. One researcher commented on the baffling discovery by noting that ‘the present wonder is not that intersexual conditions occur, but that the balance of endocrine factors usually comes down on one side or the other to produce a recognizable male or female – perhaps in these days, I should say, a more or less recognizable male or female’.” ” . . . research that might have made the study of gender variance something more substantial than an ‘ideology’ came to an abrupt end when the Johns Hopkins clinic closed in 1997 and most of the other university clinics followed suit.” “‘One of the things that I think was so tragic about SRS [Sex Reassignment Surgery] being forced off of medical school campuses is that it meant that almost all good research came to an abrupt end. That to me is a tragedy because there’s just so much research crying out to be done’, says Ben Barres of Stanford.” “Hormones acting under the influence of genes are now thought to be the primary architects of gender identity . . .” “. . . the exact mechanisms by which a core gender identity (or sexual orientation) is developed remain unclear.” “The truth is . . . ‘we don’t know where to look. It might be in the biochemistry. It might be somewhere else.’ [Milton] Diamond thinks that the seat of gender identity will eventually be located in the brain, ‘but it doesn’t have to be something that’s morphologically obvious’.“

“The pressure to conform to societal expectations of ‘normal’ behavior and appearance comes from all sides – parents, school authorities, the media, and (most daunting for an adolescent) peers. Though there are no Robert’s Rules of gender posted at home, in schools, and in churches, the rules exist and are often harshly enforced by peers, parents, and school authorities.” ” . . . rather than ‘generating research’ or research funding, the classification of GID [Gender Identity Disorder] as a mental disorder seems instead to have limited the research done on physiological mechanisms for gender variance, or on the intriguing connections between GID and prenatal exposure to DES and other exogenous estrogens and androgens.” “This lack of research has very large consequences for the transgender community, even beyond the basic but somewhat esoteric question of the etiology (cause) of gender variance.” “As even this brief treatment of the issue shows, questions far outnumber answers in the realm of transgender health care and research. In no area is this more true than in the biggest and most controversial question of all – what causes gender variance and why do there seem to be so many more gender-variant people in the world today than there were fifty years ago?”

Question: “Well, they put DES in pregnancy vitamins . . . I know. That’s one of the issues we have to deal with now, when we ask people, ‘Did your mother take DES?’ and they ask their mothers and they say, ‘No, they just gave me lots of vitamins.’ But that’s what they called them; that’s how they marketed them to women. ‘Oh, these are just vitamins.’ Some of them were more honest in saying, ‘This is to prevent miscarriage.’ But some women were given DES who hadn’t even miscarried, in vitamins and so forth.” “Developments in the last decade have highlighted the reproductive, behavioral, and anatomical effects of endocrine disrupters on animals exposed to these chemicals. Effects due to endocrine-disrupting chemicals are observed at concentrations as low as parts per trillion for animals in the laboratory, indicating that the fetal endocrine system is more sensitive to disruption than any other know body system. These results of toxicology are significantly related to the field of gender identity and indicate a causal relationship between exposure to these chemicals and anomalies in the expression of gender identity and other disorders such as reproductive failure. CHRISTINE JOHNSON, ‘ENDOCRINE DISRUPTING CHEMICALS AND TRANSSEXUALISM’ SEATTLE, 2001.” [When] “. . . I encountered Christine Johnson’s article sketching out a hypothesis between endocrine disrupters and transsexuality, I was two years into the research for this book. I had spoken to literally hundreds of transgendered and transsexual people at meetings and online. By then, it was abundantly clear to me that the people I was meeting were not mentally ill.” [When] “. . . I encountered Christine Johnson and discovered that there was, in fact, a substantial scientific literature on anomalous sexual differentiation, but that I wouldn’t find it in journals of endocrinology or psychiatry. I would find the hard science in the last places I would have thought to look: toxicology and environmental health, the disciplines in which I had been trained as a science writer.” “Regarding the environmental endocrine hypothesis itself and its relationship to transsexuality, Johnson points out that the scientific literature ‘makes it abundantly clear that it is possible to feminize males and masculinize females by application of exogenous hormones. This is reproduced reliably in the lab on animals, so there should be little argument over the potential of hormonal compounds to alter the ‘normal’ path of development. For the last 40 years, gender researchers have been saying that hormonal variations can indeed cause altered development of the anatomy of the genitals and the brain. And so now we find endocrine disrupters all over the place, and yet we still take the incredibly naive view that somehow we develop independently from our hormonal environment? I find this view totally inconsistent with my understanding of how natural systems work.” “Dr. John McLachlan, the Tulane University researcher . . . has been studying the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals for over thirty years. I approached him after his presentation at the February 2002 meeting and asked him, with some trepidation, if it was possible for endocrine-disrupting chemicals to affect human gender identity and sexual orientation, and to increase the prevalence of intersex conditions. ‘Absolutely,’ he replied . . .” “‘You should have a look at the DES literature’, he said. Soon after the meeting, I did so. what I discovered astonished me.”

“DES was first synthesized in 1938, in the laboratory of Sir Charles Dodds, a professor of biochemistry at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School at the University of London.” “. . . Dodd’s discovery of a synthetic estrogen that could be easily and cheaply produced was hailed as a great boon.” “. . . DES, manufactured from coal tar products, is not at all chemically similar in structure to natural estrogens.” The human body cannot utilize DES the same way that it does with estrogen, so some normal methods are not effective, and some abnormal methods must be employed. “Never patented, the drug was sold under more than 400 different brand names by 257 pharmaceutical companies in the United States alone.” DES was approved by the FDA in 1941 and prescribed to suppress lactation (for those women who did not choose to breastfeed), “to treat amenorrhea (failure to menstrate) and vaginitis and (surreptitiously) to prevent miscarriage . . .” Studies to confirm efficacy to prevent miscarriages were either flawed or showed no benefit in preventing miscarriages, but none the less, “more than three million pregnant women in the United States alone were prescribed DES between 1941 and 1971.” DES was included in pills, injections, vaginal suppositories, and vitamins and “became a routine part of the quality care that private practitioners gave their predominantly middle-class patients . . .” “Beginning in the early forties, DES was also used in commercial agriculture, added to the feed given to livestock and chickens in pellets – a practice given added impetus when, in 1947, researchers at the Purdue University Agriculture Station discovered that DES was a potent growth stimulant in cattle. In 1959 high levels of DES in meat were discovered to produce ‘disturbing symptoms’ in agricultural workers and consumers, including sterility, impotence, and gynecomastia (breast growth) in men.” DES was banned in chicken and lamb feed that same year, but not banned in cattle feed until 1971. How many people were exposed to DES between 1941 and 1971 is incalculable, as well as secondary exposures. Epigenetics studies how maternal nutrition can change gene function without altering DNA by inducing mutations. “Genes can be activated or inactivated by a process called methylation . . . which is critically important during prenatal and postnatal development, silencing some genes and activating others . . .” “‘Fleeting exposure to anything that influences methylation patterns during development can change the animal or person for a lifetime,’ the science writer Sandra Blakeslee reports . . .” “A fact sheet on DES produced by the National Toxicology Program notes transsexualism as one of many effects of DES, and the Dictionary of Organic Compounds, a standard reference book for organic chemists, notes that DES ’causes male impotence and transsexual changes particularly in offspring exposed in utero’.” “Prenatal exposure to DES primes an individual to be supersensitive to estrogens, whether endogenous (produced within the body) or exogenous (outside the body) for the remainder of his or her life.” “The DES Cancer Network estimates that approximately ten million mothers and unborn children were exposed to DES from 1941 to 1971. A great many of these individuals, both mothers and children, have no idea that they were unwitting participants in the DES experiment.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Anyone heard of the COVID-19 injections? If you don’t know about the adverse effects of those injections, then you need to go back and review a few of our prior blogs! “Even if they did not receive direct injections of DES, many of our mothers ate contaminated food before and during their pregnancies.”

Our next blog will conclude this series on TRANSPHOBIA and finalize our search for The Truth by more comments on DES, along with other summarizing facts, from the book we have been reviewing, “The Riddle of Gender”. We again implore the reader to use your FREEDOM and LIBERTY to review and ponder upon the vast amount of material we have presented over the last several weeks. Remember, unity in our Nation does not require uniformity. We should only choose conversation over confrontation in our great Nation, as we seek transparency and truth.

NOTE: If you are joining our blogs today, be advised you are doing so in the middle of a thread of blogs which began back on April 3, 2022, titled TRANSPHOBIA. In order to understand the underlying foundation we established for what you will read today, it is important that you go back and read all of those blogs in sequence before reading the one below.

As we now begin to conclude our blog series on TRANSPHOBIA, we want to delve into areas rarely explored, let alone discussed. Most people who are not trans simply think those caught within the web of the trans world have made this decision only by choice, influenced by pressures inflicted upon them. In our wrap-up series beginning today, we are going to demonstrate that those who are trans have been heavily influence biologically and behaviorally by factors beyond their control. We seek only The Truth in this series and challenge all readers to explore the areas we have highlighted. The hope is that many who have been repulsed by the trans world, will see more clearly the dilemma these trans folks are in, and maybe engender a greater understanding and even sympathy for their daily struggle. We do not believe that all, who may think they are transgendered, queer, or of some other newly invented variant of the trans world, are legitimate. Only through scientific analysis, extensive counselling, and a full exploration of all contributing and influential factors, can and should hormonal and biological changing processes be considered.

In these concluding chapters of our TRANSPHOBIA blog series, we will be referencing a book titled, “The Riddle Of Gender”, by Deborah Rudacille, published in 2006. There are 35 pages of additional notes at the conclusion of the book giving source and reference material. In addition, the bibliography has 78 references given. There is an extensive Index at the back of the book covering 19 pages by itself. Obviously, this book is well documented for the those who may be skeptical of books on such topics. In the author’s Acknowledgment section, it is important to share her own words concerning her development of this book: “Many individuals and organizations have contributed to my education on topics discussed in this book. My informal conversations with people at various conferences attended during the course of my research, as well as my participation (and lurking) on various online discussion lists has helped me to understand that members of the trans community (or more properly speaking, communities) are quite diverse in their backgrounds, beliefs, and goals. I regret that I have been unable to cover many of the topics that various individuals encouraged me to explore: for example, the challenges faced by trans elders and veterans; the impact of race and socioeconomics on access to health care and other services; the problems encountered by homeless, disabled, and incarcerated trans people; and the role of faith and family in the lives of trans people. Each of these subjects is important and worthy of discussion but, unfortunately, falls outside the scope of this book. My apologies to those who generously contributed their time and expertise on these matters, only to find that I have not covered their issues. My deepest thanks go to those individuals who shared with me sometimes very painful and private information, and permitted me to use their names and stories – and also to those whose personal or professional responsibilities required that they assume the cloak of anonymity. I am profoundly grateful to all my sources, both named and anonymous, whose candor helped me to understand their lives and struggles.” Following are some excerpts from this book that will reveal many things you did not know, and will hopefully encourage more compassion towards the trans communities, while at the same time diminish TRANSPHOBIA in our world today. First, the book lays out facts concerning the development of the fetus in the womb, so a brief human biology review is in order. Our search for The Truth continues below.

“I grew up in a time when increasing numbers of people believed that the differences between males and females were socially constructed, and that if children were raised to understand that there were no essential differences between being born in a male body and being born in a female body, we would all be ‘free to be’ – free of all gender-based boundaries and limitations, free of social stereotypes based on genital distinctions. Boys could cry, and girls could compete; boys could be nurses, homemakers, and teachers (the nurturing professions), and girls could be fighter pilots, police officers, and firefighters (the warrior professions). I am happy to live in a society that has struggled to eradicate limiting beliefs and practices that have kept both men and women from realizing their full potential as human beings. But I have largely abandoned the belief that all the differences we note between men and women are purely a matter of social custom. Some differences run much deeper than custom, the primary one being the deeply felt and ineradicable sense that one is male or female – or neither.” “But gender differences cannot be rooted in culture alone, because my body (what’s below my neck) and my brain (what’s above my neck) are not divided by some kind of biological Berlin Wall. The body and the brain are an open city, built on the constant exchange of information. Just after my mother’s egg and my father’s sperm united, each contributing and X chromosome to my female genotype, skeins of DNA began to uncoil and replicate. Messages traveled between the rapidly multiplying cells that had not yet differentiated into specific organs and tissues, switching genes on and off under instructions from the master template, guiding my development. In the sixth week of pregnancy, the process of sexual differentiation began. The androgynous embryo, which possesses both mullerian and wolffian ducts and thus has the potential to develop either a male or female reproductive anatomy, accepted its genetic fate, and an exquisitely choreographed dance began, performed by a company of steroid hormones.” “Evidence suggests that my brain was prenatally ‘sexed’ as well, through the mechanism by which this process is carried out is less clearly understood.” “In an XY fetus, a different set of chemical messages begins circulating in the second month of pregnancy, based on instructions encoded in the Y chromosome. ‘Male!’ the Y chromosome shouts, and a gene called SRY directs the primitive gonad to form testicles, rather than ovaries. The testicles soon begin to produce androgens, which will masculinize both genitalia and brain. One of the chemical messengers produced by the testicles, mullerian-inhibiting substance (MIS), begins circulating throughout the rapidly dividing cells, barking out orders to arrest the development of a female reproductive anatomy. Testosterone and MIS ensure that [the male sex organs are developed]. In males, the hormone-driven sexing of the brain is known to continue into the weeks immediately following birth, when the testicles pump out a flood of testosterone at levels that will not be matched until puberty. By that time, the male child will have learned what behaviors and attitudes his family and culture expect him to display; these are based on the presence of male genitals. The process of prenatal sexual differentiation is complex and multifaceted. An embryo needs more than a Y chromosome to become male; it also needs and androgen receptor gene on the X chromosome to enable it to respond to the androgens its testes are producing. If the androgen receptor gene isn’t functioning, the XY fetus will develop female genitalia. Moreover, testosterone (the so-called male hormone) is transformed into estrogen in the brain by an enzyme called aromatase. As researcher Lindsey Berkson has pointed out, ‘one cheeky irony of life is that how masculine a man is as an adult may be partly the result of his having had optimal amounts of estrogen in his brain at a certain time during his stay in the womb. Amazingly minute differences – parts per trillion or parts per billion of a few sex hormones – literally affect the making of men or women.’ More often than most people suspect, the ‘script’ of sexual differentiation is altered during pregnancy, producing variation.”

“Male-bodied persons dressing and living as women and female-bodied persons dressing and living as men were known in ancient Greece and Rome, among Native American tribes [as we have pointed out in previous blogs on this subject] prior to the arrival of Europeans, on the Indian subcontinent, in Africa, in Siberia, in eastern Europe, and in nearly every other indigenous society studied by anthropologists. According to historian Vern Bullough, ‘gender crossing is so ubiquitous, that genitalia by itself has never been a universal nor essential insignia of a lifelong gender.'” “Because we live in a culture that expects science to settle questions based in the body, we look to science to tell us what it means to be male and female, how gender identity is formed, and why it is that the sex of the body sometimes seems to be at odds with the sex of the mind. But despite our sophisticated tests, science can still offer no definitive answer to this question, only tantalizing clues.” “Today our tools are vastly more powerful, yet they are no more accurate in predicting gender identity in certain cases than the eyeball test . . . “ “Most do not make a distinction between anatomical sex and gender identity. Nor do they realize that it is possible for a person to have XY chromosomes yet female-body morphology and genitals as a result of androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), or XX chromosomes yet male-body morphology and genitals as a result of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). Those are only two of a number of genetic and endocrine conditions that can create anatomically intersexual people. Once these persons were called hermaphrodites, after the intersexual offspring of the gods Hermes and Aphrodite. As that myth indicates, in some cultures, intersexual and transgendered persons have been viewed with reverence and respect.” “No one accuses intersexual persons of being mentally ill. Their gender variance is inscribed on their bodies, in their gonads, genitals, or chromosomes – and so seems ‘real’ because it is a material, measurable entity. The same is not true of transgendered and transsexual persons, who present a baffling enigma to their families, physicians, and themselves.”

“Gender variance is not a widely discussed subject, even in medical schools, and as a consequence many physicians, like the general public, know very little about the subject other than what they are able to glean from sensationalist media accounts of cross-dressing and trans-sexuality. Gender variance still seems to be considered a more suitable topic for late-night talk show jokes than for journals of public health and public policy . . .” “Public prejudices make it difficult for visibly transgendered or transsexual people to gain an education, employment, housing, or health care, and acute gender dysphoria leaves people at high risk for drug abuse, depression, and suicide.” “Legal scholar Jillian Weiss has pointed out that ‘gender identity disorders’ are probably far more common than previously suspected, on the basis of four general observations. First, unrecognized gender problems are occasionally diagnosed when patients are seen with anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and other psychiatric conditions, which often serve to mask the underlying gender issue. Second, many individuals who meet the diagnostic criteria for ‘gender identity disorder’ never present themselves for treatment (this category includes the great majority of cross-dressers, professional female impersonators, and gender-variant gay people). Third, the intensity of some people’s feelings of gender-related discomfort fluctuates throughout their lifetimes, and does not always achieve a sustained ‘clinical threshold’ requiring treatment. Finally, gender-variant behavior among female-bodied persons is ‘invisible’ in a way that gender-variant behavior in male-bodied persons is not. On the most basic level, this is exemplified by the relative ease with which women can don men’s clothing.” “Others believe that greater public tolerance and acceptance, combined with the increased ability to connect with others online and in person, is responsible for the increasing visibility and political activism of gender-variant people. ‘Twenty or forty or fifty years ago, you couldn’t have had a meeting like this one,’ Professor Milton Diamond told me at the 2003 annual meeting of the International Foundation for Gender Education. The majority of the meeting’s participants were cross-dressed men, a group that remains the most heavily closeted of sexual minorities and the most persecuted. ‘A meeting like this would have been broken up by the police,’ Diamond said. Then too he pointed out, ‘Many of these individuals think that they are the only ones in the world, and they don’t think that there is a solution, and when they find a solution or find a safe haven somewhere, they utilize it. Many of these activities are like support groups in their own way. They don’t call them that, but that’s what they are.'”

In our continuing blog on “TRANSPHOBIA – The Truth“, next week we will begin to get a bit more technical and look at potential biological and scientific causes for the trans issue in our society today, as we continue our exploration of the book, The Riddle of Gender. Until then, as always, we encourage all readers to keep an open mind and continue to evaluate the evidence we are presenting to be better able to make rational, knowledge-based, science-based judgements about all things trans. FREEDOM and LIBERTY also means to allow our consciousness to be FREE to evaluate facts, make appropriate decisions based upon those facts, and then to act accordingly. The FREEDOM to speak, in open forum, should challenge our positions upon which we stand, to ensure we stand on truth, based on facts and knowledge. We will never agree on all things. In our great Nation, LIBERTY must extend to all citizens, even if we sometimes disagree.

If you are just now joining the reading of our blogs, you need to be aware that we are currently in a series of blogs dealing with trans issues. It is important to read these blogs in the order in which they were first presented in order to understand the scope of our research into this topic without establishing bias based on an issue for which the proper research foundation has not yet been laid. So, please go back and review all of our blogs on this issue beginning with the one we published on April 3, 2022. In our continued search for The Truth about all things surrounding the trans issue today, much of that which is ignored by choice or by avoiding study to learn more about it, we continue our blog about the whirlwind of talk leading to the TRANSPHOBIA mind set. Before we get into another deep dive into potential causes and effects of trans related issues, we thought it relevant to explore the vast range of behaviors found within the trans culture. We believe most of you are aware of this broad spectrum of actions but have never really correlated your observations into a conscious reality. Although these ranges in behavior happen to men and women alike, we are concentrating on those who are male.

Halloween. What a fun time of year to be anything you want to be, and it can be done without condemnation, or observer questions delving into motives or aspirations. How many men do you know, or those who you have witnessed, who dressed up as women on Halloween? For some men, to be able to dawn the slick silks, flowing wigs, high heel shoes, and to observe how one can be nearly instantaneously transformed into another sex, is both insightful and rewarding. But once the party is done and Halloween is past, the clothes and all the accoutrements are given back to your local thrift store, and all that really remains are the fading memories and maybe a picture or two of the events. Those men are quite happy to return to the world of manhood and would never in a thousand years consider delving more deeply into the art of crossdressing. On the very broad scale of trans behavior, these men would be on the far left of the spectrum. Consider this in relation to a “Bell Curve”, see the diagram below:

On the far left of the Bell Curve, the numbers who participate in this type of transformation are few. On the far right of the Bell Curve, are those who have taken the massive transformation to become as fully woman as possible through a process known as SRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery). The acronym GAS (Gender Affirmation Surgery) had been adopted, although many now do not like to say they went through “GAS”, so the newest and most accepted term is GCS (Gender Confirmation Surgery). Those who have gone through this process have dealt with Gender Dysphoria for years, hating who they were as men, detesting what was between their legs. Many have undergone plastic surgery to make visible features more feminine, like breast augmentation, facelifts, and even in some cases vocal cord surgery and the diminishing of the Adam’s Apple. Often, once this transformation is complete, these transwomen disappear into society, and for the most part, have completely divested themselves of their previous lives. Some are able to blend into society unnoticed, and a few are even able to make this transformation and retain their original jobs, livelihoods, and most friends. You probably drive or walk by these people every day without even noticing, and the last thing they want is to be singled out and identified as trans. These are the two extremes on our trans spectrum or Bell Curve. Between these two extremes are the vast majority of trans individuals.

On the left of the spectrum, those not satisfied enough with putting away their Halloween woman, will secretly dress up whenever they have the opportunity. They are the closeted crossdresser. One who dares not disclose their fetish for fear of rejection, or even the total destruction of the entire fabric of their lives up until the point of revelation, including family, financial, and social discrimination and banishment. They live in fear of exposure, often going through periods of what is called, “The Purge”, where they will feal as though they are bad, evil people, and for a time will discard any and everything pulling them into their perceived vial habit. Over time, a few months or even years, they recognize that the pull to disassociate from their fetish is unsustainable, and they revert once again to their closeted ways. These “Purges” can happen multiple times in these individuals’ lives. The stories these men tell are often identical, usually beginning at a very early age, experimenting with a sister’s or mother’s wardrobe in secret. They secretly wish they had never been born a boy. Some of these men make a break and risk all to more fully develop their inward persona by going out in public, or joining associations of like-minded individuals, sometimes, but rarely, are their families or wives onboard with this newfound public expression, and usually family life is shattered. Sometimes these individuals, being unable to bear the burden of these separations and rejections, commit suicide.

In the middle of this spectrum of trans folks we have been exploring, are the vast numbers of men who accepted who they are, have found a measure of solace and resignation to their situations. Some are content to spend a few hours a month, or days out of the year, being more feminine. But once their itch has been scratched, they are perfectly able and satisfied to go back into their macho world. These men we consider to be crossdressers, the center left on our Bell Curve. Some men are not satisfied with this periodic flip-flopping. They move into a more daily experience, living life as woman. They may take hormone treatments, have laser hair removal, and acquire their own personal feminine wardrobes and accoutrements. They expand their network of fellow transwomen and often share outings and a variety of venues. These men are not crossdressers, they are transwomen. These are on the center-right of our Bell Curve and are those who are transgendered.

For some, there remains a frustration and dissatisfaction with the physical body given them at birth. There is a strong desire to be more female than male, not just on the outside, but on the inside as well. However, multiple roadblocks often prevent further steps down the bell-curve slope to GCS. Usually, the main impediment is financial. One can spend $20,000 to $50,000 or more in making the final transformation. Some would even fly to overseas destinations to have the procedure done, where it was cheaper to do, including airfare and lodging. For most, the failure of insurance companies or businesses to fully fund these transformation surgeries prevents many transwomen from being who they believe themselves to be behaviorally. For some, money may not be the issue, but maybe age or health, as the GCS is extensive, sometimes requiring skin grafts and extensive daily follow-on care. To say it more bluntly, it is not like getting an oil change, out with the old and in with the new. This process requires checking the dipstick each and every day. It’s not a get it and forget it type of procedure. It requires commitment and dedication.

For the remainder of this blog, we would like to consider how others, maybe a wife, might glean some insight into those who share the vast numbers within our Bell Curve, whether they be crossdressers or transgendered. The information is taken from the book “Crossdressers: And Those Who Share Their Lives” (Peggy J. Rudd, Ed.D.), written by the wife of a crossdresser, published in 1995. As we did when reviewing the previous book on the subject, it is important to note that this book lists 8 Resources, and the Bibliography lists 21 sources. It is obviously well researched and written from personal experience. Following is a compilation of excerpts from this short book dealing with crossdressing:

“The choice to accept or reject my husband was affected by perceptions, previous thought patterns, and my own present level of knowledge, but I made a deliberate choice to move beyond these factors and into the realm of compassion and empathy. Soon I came to realize that my husband had not chosen crossdressing either, and he also felt pain. Part of what I had to overcome related to semantics. At that time my husband referred to himself as a transvestite which, unfortunately, was the word of choice for most journalists who sensationalized the stories about persons who rob banks and commit sex crimes while crossdressed. The press made little mention of the thousands of persons who crossdress for emotional satisfaction. Negative journalism set the stage for my own initial misunderstanding. Soon I came to see another side; I came to believe that crossdressers are a group of people who deserve respect and understanding.” “Simply stated, the clothes worn by crossdressers are an outward manifestation of an inward feeling.” “It seems evident that a great amount of misunderstanding has resulted because some people look no further than observing the outer activity and fail to look into the hearts and emotions of the crossdressers. People who love crossdressers frequently ask, ‘Why is he doing this to me?’ The answer to this question can be found within the motivation, the nature of the individual, and the personal needs. Perhaps the more accurate questions could be asked by the crossdresser. ‘Why am I as I am? Why am I so different?” “Some [crossdressers] feel guilty because society has placed crossdressers into stereotypes, including the incorrect assumption that all crossdressers are gay. Most crossdressers want to share their life with a woman, and the number of gay males is far less among crossdressers than among the general population. There is a tendency to hide because the behavior of crossdressers may deviate from social norms in the area of gender expression.” “Is there really cause for fear and paranoia? Many crossdressers seem to think so. Some have experienced rejection by others or they fear such rejection. There is also the fear of detrimental effects upon other family members. There are documented accounts of crossdressers who have lost their jobs when the ‘secret’ got out. Thus, the fears are well grounded, and have prompted other questions such as, ‘How will my neighbors react if they find out? What will my children think when they discover this part of me? Will I be criticized, ridiculed, or suffer some other form of verbal abuse? Will people think I am mentally ill? What if they think I am a homosexual? Will my family suffer a loss of social standing? Will I be arrested for using the ladies rest room?'” “Fear is not the only emotion keeping crossdressers hidden. Many have feelings of guilt. Initially, crossdressers do not understand the feminine feelings within themselves and tend to mask these feelings with behaviors characterized by macho.” “. . . the dominant judge and jury is frequently found from others rather than from within the individual.” “Crossdressers are some of the most misunderstood minorities. For years people have had trouble accepting gender variants. Most critics believe crossdressing is an action of preference rather than an inborn trait. In reality crossdressing is an innate quality of life as basic as being born left-handed or right-handed. Society may accept a let-handed man but has difficulty accepting a man who crossdresses.” “Compassion is freely given to people who have birth defects, and this is as it should be, but where is the compassion for people who cross gender lines? Society has been less than tolerant. Crossdressers face criticism rather than hugs. Observers should ask . . . ‘What would I do if I had been born this way’?” “For religions which view the universe from a monistic view point, cross gender behavior is but an affirmation of the essential continuity of all life and a natural expression of the spectrum of life. Religions such as animist, pantheist, and Hindu/Buddhist all embrace a monistic view of life. But religions which have a strongly transcendent view of the separation of the divine and creation such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam offer no formal place for cross gender behavior in their rituals.” (Rev. Kathryn Helms.) “On the ANGELA SHOW, a regional television talk show filmed in New Orleans, Michelle was asked if she ever felt like an actor when dressed like a woman, Her reply was very insightful. ‘Yes, we are all consummate actors, especially when dressed as men’.” “. . . many people perceive gender to be a set of social expectations. Perhaps even as small children we had preferences that were not in line with gender expectations, but most of us have moved through life doing what we are ‘supposed’ to do. Kaplan said this in a rather humorous way. ‘I like chocolate ice cream; but when I go fishing, I use worms because fish like worms.’ we bend our form to agree with the preferences of others. Then we file those imposed preferences in our minds until they become perceived to be a factual dictate.” “Traditionally, men are supposed to act, think and move like men, and any hint of the feminine is feared and soon becomes a catalyst for guilt and remorse.”

We hope this little review of just one group, crossdressers, along the wide trans spectrum, will help give a more thorough understanding of all those who wrestle with being misunderstood, vilified, and ostracized by many. Remember, FREEDOM and LIBERTY are not given by government, but by God, and his command was to love. It is possible to love a person and not like everything about them, and there is no litmus test in order to give or receive love.

The above picture is of the twins born as males on the outside, but oh so different on the inside. This blog is a continuation of a look at the book called “BECOMING NICOLE”. In our continued search for The Truth about why TRANSPHOBIA is so prevalent, we now continue with excerpts from the book which is a must read for anyone who values knowledge in order to make informed decisions. We trust our brief review of sections within this book will lead to a greater understanding of the trans issue in our world today, and hopefully an understanding and acceptance of these individuals trapped within their world created by forces beyond their control.

“The need to define ourselves as individuals is a peculiarly modern obsession, but the importance of personhood to self-definition had its beginnings in the Enlightenment.” “By the nineteenth century, urbanization, mechanization, and population growth meant the state needed to keep better track of all these individuals. Categorization and classification weren’t intellectual tools. They served the social, economic, and political status quo. Individuals have identities, but identities can be arranged systematically any way we want, by religion, by class, by trade, by sex, making it easier for the government to control its citizens.”

Included within the book’s story, are what the writer labeled as “gender frauds”, where confusion reigned supreme in sports. Nazi officials forced Hermann Ratjen to compete as Dora Ratjen in the 1936 Olympics. Genetic testing was instituted in 1968, but in 1996, eight women tested positive for the presence of male chromosomes, but it was determined they suffered from a condition known as androgen insensitivity syndrome, where babies are “. . . born with normal-looking female genitals, but with undescended or partially descended testes, a short vagina (or none at all), and sometimes no cervix. The gender test confusion was enough to force the IOC to stop gender testing three years later. The bottom line: No one test could confirm that someone was 100 percent male or 100 percent female.” While we disagree with conclusions drawn by some scientists, we must report that the IOC in 2004, and the NCAA in 2011 amended rules and bylaws allowing the participation of transgendered women when having complied with their new guidelines. Our explanation of why we disagree was mentioned in a previous blog. “Doctors and scientists agree that after a year either on female hormones or male hormone suppressants, any competitive advantage a transgender athlete might have had initially is gone. In fact, because a woman’s ovaries also produce a small amount of testosterone, transgender females (who typically do not have ovaries) may have even less testosterone in their bodies than the average woman born with female reproductive organs.”

“In 2007 . . . there was basically only one endocrinologist in the United States who specialized in the medical care and treatment of transgender children . . .” It’s easy to recognize The Truth that our Nation was way behind in looking into the reasons for, and the care of, transgendered children. The next several paragraphs are a bit more technical, so please read slowly and carefully.

“The Transgender Brain. Scientists studying gender have recently been able to build upon the burgeoning research into the genetic and neurophysiological underpinnings of homosexuality. Researchers have found, for instance, that a son born to a woman who undergoes stress early in her pregnancy is more likely to grow up being gay than a son born to a non-stressed mother. The reason: Stressed pregnant mothers release a hormone called androstenedione, which mimics testosterone but is, in fact, much weaker. This stress hormone disrupts the timing and amount of the release of testosterone into the fetal brain, which, in turn, interferes with the development of the part of the brain linked to sexual orientation. But where is the physiological evidence for being transgender? Beginning in the mid-1990s, multiple studies looked at the brains of transgender individuals’ postmortem and when researchers compared brain anatomy between males and females, they found a profound difference where the amygdala, the brain’s emotional center, begins to send projections into the hypothalamus, the source of many of the body’s essential hormones. This area, called the central region of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, or BNST, is responsible for, among other things, sex and anxiety responses. On average it is twice the size in males as in females. Likewise, the BNST in the brains of transgender females – individuals with male external anatomy, but who have lifelong female gender identification – look exactly like the BNST in the brains of those with female genitalia and reproductive organs, that is, smaller than a man’s. Interestingly, these differences hold whether the individual has undergone sex reassignment surgery, hormonal treatment, both, or neither.” “In 2008, Australian researchers discovered a genetic variation in transgender women: Their receptor gene for the male sex hormone testosterone was longer than in gender-conforming males and appeared to be less efficient at signaling the uptake of male hormones in utero, resulting in a more ‘feminized’ brain. The number and size of neurons in the hypothalamus of male-to-female transgender adults is similar to females, and the number and size of hypothalamic neurons in female-to-male transgender adults is similar to males. The size and the deep brain structure called the putamen, which forms part of the basal ganglia, is also different in transgender individuals, corresponding to a person’s gender identity, not biological or sexual status.”

“The relatively new field of epigenetics looks at the external modifications to DNA that turn certain genes ‘on’ or ‘off.’ Researchers in epigenetics seek to explain the no-man’s-land between nature and nurture where environment influences a person’s genetic makeup. This happens when changes in the environment trigger some genes to activate and others to deactivate. Identical twins may have the exact same DNA, but not the exact same molecular switches. Those switches often depend not only on environmental influences outside the womb – what the mother does, how she feels, what she eats, drinks, or smokes – but inside the womb as well. Identical twins, developing from a single egg, usually share the same placenta, but each fetus floats in its own amniotic sac and each has its own umbilical cord. Scientists have found that fetal position in the womb can cause differing amounts of hormones to reach each developing embryo. Every molecule affects every other molecule, and even in close proximity to each other, identical twins will be affected differently, which is why they also have unique fingerprints. Even after birth, gender identity may not be completely set in stone. In March 2015, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine reported they were able to change the gender behavior of newborn female rats simply by injecting a form of testosterone into the preoptic area of the hypothalamus. Despite being a week old, the female rat brains were masculinized by this testosterone derivative, and the females displayed sexual behavior typical of male rats. Physically the rats were female, but their reproductive behavior was male-like. The scientists believe that injections of the testosterone-like substance triggered a mechanism by which certain virilization genes in the brain that had been deactivated in utero were suddenly turned back on. Unquestionably, there are multiple factors that affect gender identity, from the biological to the sociological, and while there are still many questions to be answered, what we know now is that the interaction of genes with prenatal exposure to hormones in the second half of pregnancy affects brain development in such a way that it significantly influences gender identification. Recognizing that the sexual differentiation of a fetus’s brain happens later in pregnancy than genital differentiation and that both are complex biological processes, the fact that variations in gender identity exist should ultimately come as no surprise. If anything, these variations have reinforced the idea that gender identity itself is not a fixed target. Rather, it is only one ingredient of a person’s sense of self, and for some the sense of being male or female is simply not as central as it may be for others. Studies have shown that even those whose gender identity aligns with their birth sex vary in their levels of contentment with their gender identity. Gender variance, it seems, is the norm not the exception, and yet the binary view of male/female and the pathologizing of anything that doesn’t conform to these expectations is stubbornly entrenched.”

“In nature, gender is fluid, dynamic, and even interchangeable. Sex change, in fact, is a normal process in many fish species, including moray eels, gobies, and clown fish. In the hierarchy of a school of clown fish, the female occupies the top rank. When she dies, the most dominant male switches genders to take her place. When the sole male in a school of reef fish dies, the largest female begins acting more aggressive and within ten days produces sperm. In Tanzania, in a species of hyena, all the females have distinctly male-like external genitalia. There are intersex deer and male kangaroos with pouches. In 2015 researchers discovered that the males of a species of Australian lizard, called the central bearded dragon, change sex when the temperature rises, at which time they become super-fecund females. Like humans, the lizards have two sex chromosomes, Z and W. A male carries the ZZ chromosome, a female the ZW. But when male eggs are exposed to temperatures above eighty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, the ZZ male embryos grow up female. It’s important to remember that all this complexity of sexual reproduction among species is not an argument against sexual reproductive success, just further evidence of variation, which some scientists believe carries over to humans.”

Some of what follows is a repeat of what we have already addressed in a previous blog, but we include it here as further source evidence. “In India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh, millions belong to a transgender group known as hijra, which dates back at least four thousand years. According to ancient Asian myths, the hijra were accorded special powers that could confer luck and fertility on others. In Indonesia, the Bugis people believe there aren’t two or even three genders, but rather five: male, female, those who are physically male but take on the role of female, those who are physically female but take on the role of male, and those who take on the aspects of both male and female. Without all five genders represented in their culture, the Bugis believe the world would cease to exist. Gender is necessary, in other words, but not necessarily binary.”

In our next blog, we will consider the broad spectrum of gender variance, and focus in on just one segment of that continuum, those individuals who are considered to be “crossdressers”. In the conclusion of this current blog in search of The Truth about TRANSPHOBIA, we conclude with this statement made near the end of the book we have been reviewing. “The philosopher Charles Taylor once wrote: Each of us has an original way of being human: Each person has his or her own ‘measure.’ . . . There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s life. But this gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.” As we have emphasized before, we again do now. Each individual’s FREEDOM and LIBERTY applies equally to all, and if not, those words really apply to no one, and are just simple, flowery words, that hold no substantial value.

We don’t normally hype any particular source of material during our blogs. However, this is a special case, because we intend to reprint selected parts of this source material to help clarify The Truth relating to its implications surrounding TRANSPHOBIA. Lest you think this reading is just one person’s opinion of The Truth, we want to point out that at the close of this book there is a bibliography listing the sources used to bring this true-life story to the written page. There are 38 references listed! In addition, the author states: “Much of the material for this book was drawn from hundreds of hours of interview with the . . . family, doctors, lawyers, . . . school counselor, and others. The research also included extensive personal papers, journals, medical records, court depositions, photographs and videos, and an unpublished memoir . . ., all courtesy of the . . . family. Some of the events in this book also were witnessed firsthand by the author.” The author “ . . . spent almost 4 years reporting this immersive account . . . “. In addition, the author lists 28 resources, including suicide prevention, equality advocates, legal help, and youth and family organizations. The author also lists 16 definitions in the glossary to better inform the uneducated in the trans arena. So, why do we rely so heavily on this one publication? We think the answer is quite clear. At FREEDOMGOFORTH.COM, we spend an inordinate amount of time researching each and every blog we post. While your 7 minutes spent reading one of our typical blogs of 1400 to 2000 words, we will spend on average two to four hours in research for each minute you read. In the case of TRANSPHOBIA, since this area of discussion is so broad in its implications, and vast in the amount of available source material, it was extremely beneficial to provide to you this short read, what it took one author 4 years to write. Only a full read of this book can bring the story of Nicole and her family into proper focus, and we encourage all to spend the time to do so, as this is one powerful way, among many, to stop the spread of TRANSPHOBIA and bring The Truth to enlighten the uninformed. We trust the selected excerpts from this book, the “CliffsNotes” if you will, will be most valuable in this pursuit.

“When Oprah asked Boylan (Jennifer Finney Boylan, an English professor at Colby college in Maine, and a transgendered woman) about the origin of her condition, she said, ‘No one really knows. I think there has to be a medical component. It’s something you have from the age of two or three. Some people think that it has to do with the secretion of hormones in the mother’s womb around the sixth week of pregnancy’.”

“If there is no one place in the brain that provides a sense of self, then perhaps there’s no one place in the brain that provides us with a picture of that sense of self. After all, the feeling we have of being a body arises from several disparate places in the brain. There are a hundred million cells in the eye responsible for picking up visual information from the world, but they are connected to just a million neurons, the cells responsible for signaling the brain about what is being seen. In other words, the brain discards more visual information than it lets in. Which means the message from perception is constantly being massaged. There is no simple act of perception. What there is, is expectation. Coins appear larger to poor children than to those who are well off. Food-related words are clearer and appear brighter on the page to people who are hungry. Everything in our environment influences who we are and how we see ourselves – even our own bodies. Scientists have conducted experiments that show that people who deliberately take on classic poses of dominance and stand, for instance, with their legs apart and hands on their hips, even for just a few minutes, substantially increase their self-confidence. Ask someone to hunch over or curl up, and they will lose that confidence. What is the mirror image seen by children who believe themselves to be the other gender? The body tells a story, but the story can change what a body sees, and a body can change a person’s mind.”

“In the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the national debate on transgender rights was still mostly sotto voce, and advocacy centered on legal documents.” “No one really knew how many people in the United States identified as transgender. Research was plentiful on lesbian, gay and bisexual people, but not on those identifying as transgender. In fact, getting someone to admit to being transgender, even anonymously, was extremely difficult, which made research nearly impossible.”

In the next paragraph the author gets somewhat technical. We ask the reader to consider this section carefully, as seeking out The Truth requires exploration in areas unfamiliar and often challenging.

“The Xs and Ys of Sex. Humans have long thought they could control the sex of a newborn or, at the very least, influence whether a baby would be born male or female. Ancient Romans believed if a pregnant woman carried the egg of a chicken close to her breast, she would give birth to a boy. Aristotle contended that conception on the day of a strong north wind would result in a male child, on the day of a strong south wind, a female. In the first century, Pliny the Elder listed a host of recipes to increase the odds of a woman bearing a male child: Either the man or the woman should drink three cups of water containing lakeweed seeds before the evening meal for forty consecutive nights prior to conception, or drink the juice from the male part of the parthenon plant mixed with raisin wine. Last, but certainly not least, the one sure method of giving birth to a boy: eating a rooster’s testicles. Not to be outdone, Greek physician Galen, in the second century, offered up the following suggestions: A woman could ensure the birth of a male child if, before sexual intercourse, she bound her right foot with a child’s white ribbon. A man could ensure the same if he engaged in intercourse while lying on his right side. Even a prank could influence the sex of a child if, unbeknownst to the pregnant woman, someone placed parsley on her head. Her baby’s sex would then be determined by the sex of whomever she next addressed. Hippocrates’s solution, perhaps was simplest, if also the most painful: binding of the right testicle for the birth of a girl; binding of the left testicle for a boy. There is no shortage of only slightly more sophisticated theories today. For example, because X-chromosome-carrying sperm, which will produce a girl, swim slower and live longer than Y-carrying sperm, the odds of having a daughter are thought to increase if intercourse takes place several days before ovulation, giving male sperm more time to die off. What we know for sure is that we all begin life essentially genderless, at least in terms of sexual anatomy. The last of our twenty-three pairs of chromosomes makes us either genetic males (XY) or genetic females (XX), but there are at least fifty genes that play a part in sexual identity development and are expressed at different levels early on. Sexual anatomy, however, is determined in large part by hormones. All of us begin, in utero, with an opening next to the anus and a kind of genital “bud.” The addition of testosterone drives the fetus in the male direction, with the “bud” developing into a penis and the tissue around the hole fusing and forming the scrotum. (This accounts for the “seam” over the scrotum and up the penis.) An inhibiting hormone prevents males from developing internal female reproductive organs. Without testosterone, the embryo develops in the female direction: the opening becomes the vagina and the labia, the bud the clitoris. Sexual differentiation of the genitals happens at about six weeks, but the sexual differentiation of the brain, including gender identity and the setting of our gender behavior, is, at least partly, a distinct process. Again, hormones play the crucial role, with surges of testosterone indirectly “masculinizing” the brains of some fetuses, causing subtle but distinct differences in brain structure and functional activity. For instance, the straight gyrus, a narrow strip that runs along the midline on the undersurface of the frontal lobe, is about 10 percent larger in women than men. The straight gyrus, scientists have found, is highly correlated with social cognition – that is, interpersonal awareness. These same scientists, however, caution that differences in biological sex are not necessarily hardwired or absolute. In adults, they found that regardless of biological sex, the larger the straight gyrus the more “feminine” the behavior. For most males, the action of male hormones on the brain is crucial to the development of male gender identity. A mutation of an androgen receptor on the X chromosome can cause androgen insensitivity syndrome, in which virilization of the brain fails, and when it does, a baby will be born chromosomally male (XY) and have testes rather than ovaries, but also a short vagina, and the child’s outward appearance will be female. Its gender identity is nearly always female as well. In other words, our genitals and our gender identity are not the same. Sexual anatomy and gender identity are the products of two different processes, occurring at distinctly different times and along different neural pathways before we are even born. Both are functions of genes as well as hormones, and while sexual anatomy and gender identity usually match, there are dozens of biological events that can affect the outcome of the latter and cause an incongruence between the two. In some ways, the brain and the body are two very different aspects of what it means to be human, especially when it comes to sex and gender. Who we are, male or female, is a brain process, but what we look like at birth, what we develop into at puberty, who we are attracted to and how we act – male, female, or something in between – are all embedded in different groups of brain cells with different patterns of growth and activity. Ultimately gender identity is the result of biological processes and is a function of the interplay between sex hormones and the developing brain, and because it is a process that takes place over time, in utero, it can be influenced by any number of environmental effects. Studying gender identity in the laboratory with animal models is virtually impossible. There is no way to know whether a male monkey feels like a male monkey. There is no experimental model of the transgender person; there is no lab protocol; no double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trials. There are just human beings, each of us understanding, often without thinking about it, who we are, male, female, or something in between. The permutations are myriad. Some individuals have the chromosomes of one gender but the sex organs of the opposite gender. Others are born with male genitals and testes, but internally have a womb and fallopian tubes. Still others have male genitals, small testes, and ovaries. Then there are cases like the pregnant woman in Australia who in 2021 discovered that though she was about to give birth to her third child, a large number of cells in her body identified her as chromosomally male. How could that be? The woman was herself likely the result of twin embryos – a boy and a girl – that merged in her mother’s womb. She was female according to her sex organs, but genetically she was female and male, a condition called chimerism. Some people have atypical chromosomal configurations, such as XXX or XXY or XYY, and still others may have different chromosomal arrangements in different tissues, a condition called mosaicism. Beyond chromosomes, any kind of mutation, or change, in the balance of hormones will tip the sexual development of the fetus toward one side or the other independently of what the chromosomes ‘say.’ Scientists have identified more than twenty-five genes that are involved in creating differences in sexual development. With the advancements in DNA sequencing, they are uncovering an enormous range of variation in these genes as well. For more than forty years, researchers were aware of widespread microchimerism, in which stem cells from a male fetus cross the placenta into the mother’s body and maternal stem cells cross over into the male fetus. But only recently have scientists discovered that those crossover cells can last a lifetime. No one thing determines sex; rather, it’s a system, and as with any system, small changes or interruptions can lead to nonbinary results, neither wholly male nor wholly female. As many as one in one hundred infants are born with sexual anatomy that differs in some way from standard male and female anatomy, according to Brown University gender researcher Anne Fausto-Sterling. In the past, those born with this condition were called hermaphrodites. Today, scientists estimate that about one in every two thousand infants is born with genitalia so noticeable atypical that an expert in sex differentiation is consulted. Historically, how doctors decided at birth which sex to assign to intersex infants was based less on biology than on cultural expectations and stereotypes. The most common instances of ambiguous genitalia are an enlarged clitoris for female babies and a microphallus for male babies. At some hospitals in the 1970s, the medical standard for assigning male gender was based chiefly on the length of the penis. A baby born with a penis smaller than 2.5 centimeters, the size generally required for a male to urinate standing up, was assigned female. Medical professionals, in these cases, felt uncomfortable about leaving an infant with ambiguous genitalia. Most therefore urged parents to decide on a sex for these babies immediately after birth, then hand the infants over to the surgeons to ‘correct’ the confusion.”

We are going to take a break from this week’s blog as there will be much more to review next week concerning the important information that can be gleaned from this book as we complete our review. We encourage the reader to continue to be faithful in the pursuit of FREEDOM and LIBERTY, and that requires all of us to seek The Truth, even if it sometimes challenges our pre-established beliefs.