Both: Early childhood socialization and what causes people to become trans

submitted by worried19 from (self.GCdebatesQT)

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[–]loveSloaneDebate King 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

To clarify because i know I was rambling a bit- I’m not saying that I don’t think society contributes to trans people- im saying that, based on the fact that there’s just more gnc people (be it publicly or privately) and non op trans/non binary people than trans people, I think that it’s a combination of mental illness and society that makes people transition or have dysphoria. And I think it’s more mental than societal. I do think society can contribute to it, even if it just contributes to the feeling of “I won’t be accepted as a man/woman”, but there’s gotta be something that separates gnc people from people who transition, and to me that something is mental illness. If it weren’t, I’d think there’d be less of the “woman/man trapped in a male/female body”, “i identify as a wo/man” or even the genuine discomfort with your visibly sexed parts, instead we’d hear more trans people discuss feeling the need to transition due to societal expectations. It’s the reason most trans people give for wanting to transition that made me give the answer I gave. If it were more societal, we’d not have the TWAW thing or the brain sex stuff or most of the ideology and refusal to acknowledge basic science from so many, and I think we’d have less issues all around between female rights and language and trans people.

Eta- more clarification: I think society can possibly exacerbate a mental illness, I don’t t hi k it’s enough to cause transition

[–]worried19[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

thousands or even millions of gnc people don’t transition, despite not having acceptance- so I think there’s gotta be something else that pushes the ones that do, it’s not just society’s response to gnc people, it’s also something in them.

I do agree with this. I wouldn't put all the blame on society, even if society exacerbates the problem. But there is clearly something within trans people that leaves them susceptible to developing dysphoria in the first place. However, I tend to think extremely feminine male homosexuals and classic transsexuals are more alike than they are different. I think it's possible that something in the environment could cause them to "tip" from merely homosexual to transsexual. There are examples of identical twins where one is a gay man and the other is a trans woman, for example. So maybe there's something psychological at play. I'm also not opposed to the idea that biology may be responsible one way or another.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

After seeing your other post, I think biology could be related to some degree. If so many trans people had mothers with mental health issues, it could make sense that children of mentally unhealthy people are more likely to have mental health concerns, and if they had mothers with narcissistic personality disorders and bpd etc, maybe the way they were treated or things they went through as children lead them to develop a trans identity, idk if that makes sense, but it just seems to me that if you have a bpd and narcissistic mother you may very well have a pretty tough, even traumatic, childhood (if the parent isn’t treating their condition- I’m not trying to insinuate that a mother with a mental health issue can’t be a good parent). So it could be both a combo of nature and nurture, or one or the other?

As for the twins- I wonder if one of the men transitioned to be different from their sibling. They could have wanted an identity of their own, and so often twins are viewed as a set and not as individuals. I don’t know who you’re referring to so it’s hard to address without more information, but I do often hear stories of twins who struggle with finding a sense of themselves, because they’ve always been a part of a pair, if that makes sense. Again, idk the back story or who they are.

[–]worried19[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Could be. As for the twins, there are lots of examples online.

It seems like there may be something biological because identical twins both turn out to be transsexual at far higher rates than fraternal twins.

Combining data from our independent findings with those from past research, 13 of 39 male MZ twin pairs (33.3%) were found to be concordant for transsexual identity and eight of 25 (22.8%) female MZ twins were found concordant. In comparison, concordance between either male or female DZ twins was low or zero (1/38 = 2.6%).

In a report that appeared while this paper was in press, Heylens et al. (2012) reported that of 23 MZ female and male twins they reviewed, nine were concordant for gender identity disorder (GID; 39%), while none of their 21 DZ twins were concordant. The investigators concluded, “These findings suggest a role for genetic factors in the development of GID.” Their results and those reported here are quite similar.

http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2013-transsexuality.html

I wish they had reported how many of those twins who didn't both transition shared a sexual orientation. If transsexuality is in fact an extreme form of homosexuality, we already know there's something biological or genetic going on with that.