Mind games

Hello everyone!

I realize it has been a while since I last posted…  I blame this on the usual: busy work, tiredness, and well honestly, I’ve been trying hard not to think about gender so much anymore.  You know, there’s a point where thinking and contemplating about something that makes you emotionally uncomfortable becomes a drawback and negatively affects daily performance.  I’ve reached that point with gender issues at the start of this month.  I’ve been hard at work preoccupying myself with other subjects/issues, one of them being options concerning my future career.  Right now, I don’t want to think about gender- if I had a choice, I don’t want to think about it at all…

Which leads me to another point: perhaps it’s just me, but I believe we can become what we think- just as we think based on how we are.  There is no rule, no scientific finding which refutes this reciprocity between these physical and mental states of being.   In my own personal opinion, I like to believe that my conscious efforts can have some impact on how I think- that I have some personal control of my emotions, my impulses, and my temperament.

In neuroanatomical research, it has been shown that different anatomical structures of the brain serve as central nodes for processing different levels of stress response.  Although I am no expert (no PhD) in the field, the general biology of the stress pathway is that the amygdala initiates a stress response in response to stressful cues.  The amygdala then sends signals to the hypothalamus which is able to release various hormones into hepatic circulation, one of which is CRF (corticosteroid release factor), a hormone which induces bodily changes associated with (chronic) stress.  This seemingly linear model of stress induction can be moderated by other structures in the brain.  For example, the amygdala sends efferents (axonal connections) to the striatum, which can then communicate with the global/ventral pallidum and finally to the thalamus.  From there, the ventral pallidum has access to brainstem nuclei, while the thalamus has access to pretty much the entire cortex.  In addition, the amygdala has direct access to the prefrontal cortex, the center of “higher order” cognitive functions such as planning, emotional composure, inpulse control, and the concept of delayed gratification.  The main point of my ramble is that I should still be able to control my own impulses.  I have not had any depressive episodes in which cases I have required medical intervention suggesting I have fairly normal cognitive reign on my emotions.

A lot of trans people will tell you that living in their wrongly assigned body has been terribly agonizing and that they would rather kill themselves than live much longer without treatment.  I sympathize with whomever feels that way and in no aspect do I take away from what they feel and communicate.  However, for me the dysphoria has never been so bad as to trigger me to try to kill myself rather than to live in my birth assigned body.  For me, perhaps I can live a good, meaningful life without transition.  Perhaps.

Anyways, to try to wrap up my post without being sidetracked anymore, I’d like to bring up the proposition that perhaps I can think myself out of being so down and sad about gender.  As I said in neurobio101, there are direct defined neural pathways for stress, but there is a more complex mechanism for modulation and expression of such stress, with evidence suggesting that the prefrontal cortex has a major role in this form of modulation.  Perhaps, just maybe, I can exercise this part of my brain to keep me from gender woes.  I remember a friend telling me that “If I had a choice, I would never be transgenered”..  I know that I wouldn’t want to be transgendered too, but maybe there is a choice, a choice that isn’t easy but a choice nevertheless.

I do realize that by saying that, it is contrary to the mainstream accepted notion that “I was born this way” (lyrics kindly provided by none other than Lady Gaga herself).  Trans people, in addition to gays/lesbians assert that they have been born that way since birth.  Often times I wonder about the purpose behind such a strong group statement.  Of course, it secures the idea that their motivations/preferences are an intrinsic part of their identity that cannot be changed.  But it also seems to me that they take on such a stance to say they cannot be “converted” by the heteronormative, cisgendered, “normal” people- that their condition is irreversible.  By claiming that perhaps my trans gendered feelings are malleable, I risk expulsion from this group.

Before you (a hypothetical judgmental trans gatekeeper) cast ill judgment on me and pass me off as a fake trans person, let me propose the high likelyhood that we share etiology for our gendered feelings.  The core affect stirred by our condition is similar as well.  What is different is that I am not nearly as confident and resourceful and brave as those who plan to medically transition.  I may be a coward in that respect.  Also, my life goal is not to become a woman, but to enjoy life to the fullest.  I do not need to be a certain gender to derive pleasure from things I like to do most.  In other words, I do not derive pleasure from who I am but what I do.

A mind in my opinion, is not gendered.  A mind is human- composed of all the things that both men and women feel.  Any mind can create and destroy worlds- the mind is what I live for, and clothes, shoes, hair, well that’s just icing on the cake.

Empty?

You know lately, I’ve been feeling quite blue.  Like I’m a husk of what I used to be.  Maybe it’s the transition from college life to something else after graduation.  It’s a big change.  Don’t really get to see my friends much anymore- hard to say that I actually had friends I could call close.  I could say I had friends because it was convenient for me to meet them.  Now, I don’t even know where they live.  I don’t know, it just feels like I’m on an empty row boat, going along for a ride.  The scenery is nice, the trees are pretty and the weather sweet, but it still doesn’t allay the fact that life is slowly moving towards something uncertain.

Maybe I need to pick up something along the way.  Maybe I need to find something again, but right now, life just goes on.  The days blend in with each other and a beautiful day turns quickly to dusk, then nighttime.  It rained last night- the rain was quite refreshing.  I doubt it will rain again in a while though.  I will head out for work tomorrow morning.  The last day before winter break.

The best thing for me now is to hope the best for the future… when it comes in 2 months.  (I may get invited for interviews).  Maybe there will be something else down the road.

Housing

Woohoo, so I just came back from looking at a house I will be moving into in the next week.  Quite a nice place, beautiful hardwood floors, nice view of a park, nice cute family etc.  Kinda weird thing I’ve been noticing though- the families I’ve been contacted with from Craigslist all the time want asian tenants.  I dunno why (most of them seem to have english as a second language?) but they prefer asian tenants almost exclusively.  Like they’re proud they snagged an asian for their house, lol.  Whatever though, I get a nice deal for a single.

Oh, and another thing- I didn’t realize how much privilege you get as a cis-gendered person.  I doubt I’d find a lot of places that would take me in as a subleaser if I looked like I was not a full fledged, normal guy.  Heck it would be hard to find any housing under craigslist I would think.  All the families I’ve met over craigslist rent listings seem to regard me as a nice person- perhaps because they have nothing but looks to go by.  I look kind/timid I guess (big eyes, round face, young looking)… Just goes to show you how so many people go off first impressions and start assuming things about you.  Presentation is key I guess esp. when the other person has never seen you before :/

Kinda reminded myself how much housing could be an issue during early/mid-transition.

On a saturday night

(Originally written October 23, 2010)

Well here I am fellow blog readers.

On a saturday evening, sipping a cold glass of good old H2O…

I would have gone to Monster Massive (http://www.monstermassive.com/2010/mm/intro.html) and have a kick ass m-f’ing time.  The lung thumping bass, lingering smell of cigarette smoke, hint of weed, and crazy rolling teenages galore.  It would have been fun; it would be a nice night to remember that there can be some nights where all worries and inhibitions would take a back seat.   I’d be reminded of the orgasmic nature of a unified beat.  At the very least, I would find some solace that there are others who would like to sign out of day-to-day mundane-ness and have a ridiculously crazy night.

But alas, I decided (or rather out of necessity canceled) not to go.  Perhaps it was the $82.5o price tag for the single night.  But I am pretty sure that if motivated enough, that price would be no problem.  Perhaps I just don’t find it as enjoyable as it used to be.  I really don’t know anyone who is going anymore.  Sophmore year in college was where it was at apparently.  Everyone I know is now busy working, meticulously balancing incomes and expenditures, and in general trying to save money.  I’d hate to just walk around alone.  The sounds and sights would be spectacular but I would like someone to atleast talk to as we wait in line or sit down after sweating it out on the floor.

So instead, I have decided to forego the day-to-day tonight by siting down, collecting my thoughts, and writing a wonderful and (hopefully) insightful look on my history about my trans-ness.   Lately, I’ve been looking into a lot of books about trans issues, specifically the accounts of trans women.  I stumbled upon Julia Serano’s website detailing her life story.  (Her story can be found at: http://www.switchhitter.net/)  While reading her account, I realized that I have had many similar experiences and felt an urge to write these down somewhere.  I figured electronic media would be best to write my experiences, especially since it will never get lost.  So without further ado, on to my story…

The earliest memory I have of anything sex/gender related must have been when I was 2.5-3.5 years old.  I know it must have been that age because my sister who is 4 years my junior was not born yet and my mom showed no signs of pregnancy.  Also this was during the time I was getting potty training.  So basically, I had wet my diapers again and my mom was chastising me about peeing into diapers instead of peeing into the toilet.  I also remember my mom telling me to stop touching my genitals with my fingers (and fyi, apparently a lot of toddlers have this issue- I was not being a pervert at a young age ;p).  I will spare you the details of that moment, but it was at that point, I remember very clearly, when I realized that there was something very odd about my genitals.  It seemed so ugly, all scrunched up like that.  Why did it jut out of my body?  I thought deeply about why mine went ‘out’ instead of ‘in’.  Mine should have gone ‘in’.  Nothing should be there.  It’s hard to think now of why I felt this way.  I only know from that memory that having external genitalia was inherently wrong.

Mommy told me that ‘out’ies were for boys.  ‘In’ies were for girls.  I had an ‘out’ie so therefore I was a boy.  Sure, ok mom.  As a young child I really didn’t know anything other than what my mom said.  At that age, parents are the truth.  And when my mom said I was a boy, being the rational child was, I accepted the definition.  Life as a young boy in Korea was hard.  I was always picked on by all the neighborhood boys.  One day, as I cried at home, she said to me that I was too nice for everyone.  It was in a boy’s character to joke, tease, lie, steal, and play rough.  I was told I should act more strongly to prevent bullying from all the guys.  I did not realize this at the time, but today when I look back at that memory, I realize that the teasing was because I wasn’t acting in normally boyish behavior.

My journey to where I am is a long one, and a story that I will explain in future posts.  But before logging off, I’d like to talk about college experiences that influenced my perception of myself in bad ways:

My very first ever encounter with any trans issues was in a Human Sexuality class offered by University of California, Irvine.  The class was PSYCH 129 taught by Prof. Wright.  I learned about trans definitions during the lecture on Paraphelias.  The professor taught us about how Paraphelias were a psychosexual disorder.  Transvestic fetishism was introduced to us in the same category as pedophilia and exhibitonism.  Later on, she talked about transsexuals and how this was a gender identity disorder.  The ages old mantra “woman in a man’s body”.  So that was it.  That was all I learned about gender/sex concerning trans issues.

Transvestites and Transsexuals.

The only thing that seperated these two disorders was that transvestites got a sexual rush from dressing up as a woman (oh and the other side of the spectrum, FtM was totally disregarded).  On the board, she wrote drag queens as being transvestites.  All transsexuals on the other hand, do not get a sexual rush but instead opt for sexual reasignment surgery.   Needless to say, the class did nothing to help me.

When I dressed, I didn’t get a sexual rush. And I haven’t undergone a sex change so I wasn’t a transsexual.  I was brought up as a boy, socialized as a boy, molded into a boy by my surroundings.  I was a boy in all respects.  I was not one of these unlucky individuals with a psychosexual disorder…  I was a normal boy…

Identity has so many faucets, some which are revealed to us consciously and others which run in more unconscious currents.  When I remember dreams, I am often a gender-less character, more intent on exploration and discovery than delving into the gender I was given.  What I do know is that when I dress up and present in a feminine way, my smiles are genuine heartfelt expressions.  The world seems good, and I am offered temporary reprieve of those pressing questions.

What is identity? When someone says they feel like a woman trapped in a man’s body (or vice versa man trapped in a woman’s body), how do they know what it feels like to “be a man” or a “woman”?

I know that deep down ‘there’ in my heart and mind, something exists.  What it is, I find it difficult to describe in words.  The best most accurate way I can describe myself is that I am me. Sometimes that makes me a transwoman who explores genderqueer-ness.  Other times, it seems adequate to label myself as a feminine androgynous person.

“just be yourself”

A case of LoLfail

I’ll start this post off with this quote I found on an Amazon.com board posting:

-You can’t “become” transgendered. Gender identity is genetic. Also, gender identity & sexual preference (also genetic) are independent of each other so don’t get hung up on labels. The “experts” who generate the labels have no idea what they’re talking about. Don’t waste your time with so-called professional help unless you can find a TG practitioner who’s actually been through it. Most doctors know nothing at all. Psychiatrists on this subject are expensive quacks.

I would like to focus on this statement:

Gender identity is genetic.

As a critical and rational person, I have learned never to take someone else’s word for granted.  Taking to heart something someone else has said without validating it for yourself is a sure fire way to become a media zombie (sarcasm).  I began to ask myself: is gender identity really genetic?  A Google search of “genetic gender identity” returns 525,000 search results, with numerous scientific articles also displayed at the top.  I admit, genetic studies aren’t my strong point in biology research.  However, I should be competent enough to follow research articles.

Using my best judgment, I clicked the first link I got on my Google.com search.  I was forwarded to this website.  It triumphantly stated:

In the largest ever genetic study of male to female transsexuals Australian researchers have found a significant genetic link between gender identity and a gene involved in testosterone action.

I huzzah’ed! Of course there is a solid explanation behind gender identity.  I quickly found the original journal article which made this discovery.  What I found was quite interesting.  The data showed that the CAG repeat in the AR (androgen receptor) gene is longer in MtF transsexuals than those in a male control population.  However, the difference by which they were longer was very small.

Although a significant difference between the lengths of the CAG repeat in the AR gene does exist, the difference is a very small one.  Transsexuals’ AR genes have about 2 less nucleotides than those of controls.  Normalized, that means TS women’s androgen receptor genes are about 0.18% shorter than those found in control men.  This ‘reliability’ is supported to be valid by a p value of 0.04.

[Stats 101] A p value of 1.00 will suggest that in all probable cases, the null hypothesis will be correct- that there is no difference between AR lengths in trans women and cis men.  The low p value of 0.04 suggests that in most probable scenarios, the null hypothesis will be defeated and that there is a difference in gene lengths between trans women and cis men.

I have not been exposed to much genetics before but this seems to be a very small difference between gene lengths.  In Hare et al (2009) discussion, the authors acknowledge this by stating:

The effect we identified was weak; thus it seems highly likely that male-to-female transsexualism is due to multiple genetic factors. ~ Hare et al, 2009

And there are indeed studies which have looked at other populations for relationships between gene polymorphisms (differences in genes) and transsexualism.  This Australian study from 2009 is actually based on a previous study published in 2005 by a Swedish group (Henningsson et al, 2005).  This study investigated gene polymorphisms of the same genes encoding AR (androgen receptor), ERb (estrogen receptor), and CYP19 (aromatase receptor) but only found statistically significant differences between MtF transsexuals and cis men in the length of ERb receptor gene.  The 2005 study found no significant differences between AR gene length of transsexuals and those of cis men.  Despite seemingly contradictory results, the authors of both the 2005 and 2009 paper note the small sample size of 29 transwomen for the 2005 study could attribute to a false positive.

Here is a comparison of AR gene lengths from both studies:

Nitpicking data aside, these two papers are a good start to understanding transsexualism at least from a biological standpoint.  These pilot studies show there are sound reasons to believe transsexualism has a biological basis.  There are slight but significant genetic differences between genes that encode for a specific sex steroid hormone.   But I would be cautious to draw any more from this than that.  They have in no way claimed or proven the causality between genes and transsexualism.  It is tempting and ideologically easy to draw the conclusion that there is a gene for transsexualism, that there is one piece of our genome that will magically make us transsexual if we have it or normal if we don’t.  Yet we must remember that this is one step towards understanding transsexualism.  The field of biology is seldom as clean cut as many would like to believe.   There are so many variables that exist between genes and gender identity.  It would take me much more than a few blog pages just to describe this- and I’ve only had an undergraduate education in biology.

Ultimately, a longer CAG repeat sequence will:

lead to reduced binding of the AR protein to co-activator, due to its inhibitory interaction with the receptor, resulting in less effective testosterone signaling… It is possible that a decrease in testosterone levels in the brain during development might result in incomplete masculinization of the brain in male-to-female transsexuals, resulting in a more feminized brain and a female gender identity. ~ Hare et al, 2009

Perhaps this may be true.  However a google search of “CAG repeats testosterone” led me to a German paper from 2001 that states:

The AR polymorphism had no significant association with serum levels of free T. (Zitzmann, 2001)

Yikes.  Also, in rodent studies, it has been shown that testosterone actually has a feminizing effect on the brain.  Testosterone, when brought into neurons, becomes converted to Estrogen by the enzyme Aromatase.  The estrogen inside neurons then plays a role in masculinization of the brain.

Even if we can discover more bigger and numerous differences between gene length of receptors, we must then show that the length will have some influence on the function of these receptors once the genes are translated into proteins.  The questions won’t stop there; if gene length is found to influence function, the next question to ask would be how change of function will affect gendered behavior (if at all).  The whole situation of a biological basis of gender identity quickly becomes much bigger than identifying a male or female identity gene.

To recap, this 2009 article still (in my mind) leaves the door open to how I finish this sentence: Gender identity is_______________. It is nice to be able to say: gender is genetic, gender is chemical, gender is developmental.  We (scientists) are taking giant strides towards understanding the mechanisms of gender identity but we are still far from having a well informed understanding of this process.

To close, here are Eric Vilain’s [MD PhD at UCLA] thoughts:

How did this happen? How [do we] know? How do we know the best way to feel as boys or girls? I have no idea. I don’t think anyone has any idea. I would love to know. We’re trying to work on some biological determinance of gender, to try to understand what happens in our brain, that makes us feel good about one gender vs. another. But that probably will not even tell us how we know at the time we knew it.