Why are trans people trans? Part 2 ( A Look at Well Known Narratives)

In part 1 of this article I explained why we need to look into what makes transgender people trans. In this part I discuss some of the most influential theories and explain why I think one of them is better than all the others.

The theories attempting to explain trans identities

 I will focus on the four of the most dominant scientific models found during the last 150 years or so:

1. The Rainbow Model
2. The Body Trap Model
3. The Psychodynamic Model
4. The Two Type Inversion Model

There is also a wide research field addressing gender roles and gender identities in the social sciences and the humanities. Gender studies have, for instance, contributed greatly to our understanding of gender variance. 

But that tradition is most often based on a given acceptance of transgender identities, and is more interested in explaining the way social systems lead to oppression based on gender. It rarely considers the interplay between biology, culture and psychology, which I suspect is the primary concern of Tailcalled, who invited me to this discussion, so I will not describe it here. 

That sort of thinking has greatly influenced my reading of the science of gender and transgender identities, though.

The Rainbow Model

The dominant model for explaining transgender identities these days is what I will call the Rainbow Model. It is a non-reductionistic model, in the sense that it does not reduce sex and gender to a simplistic biological sex binary or one single factor of origin.

Modern research has uncovered a mind-boggling complexity as regards  the development of biological sex, both as applies to the development of the body (both prenatally and after birth) and the formation of a conscious gender identity.

Why are Trans People Trans?

What makes trans people trans? A lot of theories have been presented, and few of them survive the test of time. Currently the dominant model is what I have called the Rainbow Model, where a transgender identity is seen as the end product of a complex interplay of factors, some of them biological. In this three parter, I look at several approaches to explaining what makes trans people trans.

Tailcalled, who has been taken active part in the "autogynhephilia" debate over at reddit, has invited me to an online debate about what makes trans people trans. I can do that. We have agreed that we will both publish a blog post giving some pointers as to how see the "etiology" (cause) of transgender identities, as starting points for our discussion.

This is my blog post. Tailcalled's one can be found here.

So the question is: What makes trans people trans?

Sounds easy, doesn't it? All we have to do is to find some relevant scientific papers and take it from there. But it is not that easy. Not that I am dismissing the role of science in such a debate. I have been writing about this kind of research since 2009. 

The problem is that science is not a kind of platform where you can look at transgender lives with purely objective and disinterested eyes. Scientists are as human as the rest of us, and their preconceptions and prejudices directs their research questions and the way they conceptualize what makes trans people trans. 

Even the terms we use are fluid and ambiguous, because they have to be as we move through a cultural shift where traditional ideas about sexuality and gender are being questioned along a wide front. That is, as I see it, a very good thing, but it makes it harder for people to discuss this topic, as people from different communities have different life experiences and understand the relevant words in different ways.

14 Ways of Being a Transphobe (and still feel good about yourself)

"I am not transphobic, but..."  Illustration: yacobchuk/crossdreamers

Harassing transgender kids, stopping trans women from going to the bathroom and calling vulnerable trans women of color sexual perverts doesn’t make anyone look good, does it? 

So what can an anti-trans activist do about that?

Always  aware of the needs of  transphobic activists I have put up some advice over at Medium. Click here for your guide to being a transphobe with pride.

</irony>

Crossdreamers.com gets a new email reminder distributor

For those who subscribe to the Crossdreamers.com email reminder service:

Google and Feedburner are closing down their free email distribution. We are moving over to Mailchimp, a well known and trusted email service.

For our subscribers the only difference will be that the email will now come from Mailchimp. You do not have to sign up again.

For readers who have not made use of this service, we have added a new subscription form in the right hand column of this page.

We do not share your email addresses with anyone else and we will use the email address to send you crossdreamer.com relevant information only.

(If you sign up and see a snail mail address for Crossdreamers: Do not take it too seriously!)

Science and Transphobia: Ray Blanchard is Now Assisting White Supremacists. Why?

Ray Blanchard, the man behind the "autogynephilia-"theory, recently took part in in a YouTube livestream hosted by the  British racist and white supremacist Edward Dutton. Needless to say, doing so effectively destroyed what was left of Blanchard's reputation as a researcher. But why would he do such a thing?

In case you have never heard about Blanchard's two-type model of male to female transgender people, here is the su twitter version: Blanchard argues that androphilic transgender women (who are attracted to men) are effeminate homosexual men, while gynephilic trans women (who are bisexual or attracted to women) are fetishistic straight men (autogynephiles).

Very few experts on trans identities believe that trans women are mentally ill these days, so his position clearly makes him an outlier in the scientific community. His model does have an effect on the lives of trans people, though, and not in a good way.

I will not spend time on bunking the Blanchardian typology in this article. That has been done here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Instead I will look at how Blanchard's actions can help us gain a better understanding of the role of science in society, and especially how it can be harnessed by bigotry.

Hiding your transphobia in plain sight

Ray Blanchard managed to a certain extent to "pass"  as a serious modern scientist, as long as he restricted himself to publishing  in science journals, hiding his real intentions behind  paywalls and science sounding jargon.

Most people do not read academic journals. Moreover, the arguments, statistics and terminology used in such publications are often impenetrable to outsiders. It is therefore hard for them to see the what lies behind the insider terminology and the complex tables.  

Debunking the female brain vs. male brain myth (and why it is not as easy as it might seem)

Lise Eliot is out with a new interesting article on the idea that the brain is gendered (i.e. different between men and women). She refers to a new meta-study of research on biological research that, as she sees it, shows that there is no difference between male and female brains beyond size.

I am a big fan of Lise Eliot, who is  a Professor of Neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in the US of A. 

Her book Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps and What We Can Do About It taught me a lot about modern neuroscience, and how some scientists takes a too simplistic approach to how our feeling of being gendered is created.

I would argue, though, that the arguments she makes against this part of neuroscience does not prove that there is no biological component to gender identity and that transgender identities therefore must be purely psychological. More about that below.

Mars vs. Venus

In a new article over at Fast Company she writes:

Everyone knows the difference between male and female brains. One is chatty and a little nervous, but never forgets and takes good care of others. The other is calmer, albeit more impulsive, but can tune out gossip to get the job done.

These are stereotypes, of course, but they hold surprising sway over the way actual brain science is designed and interpreted. Since the dawn of MRI [Magnetic resonance imaging, used for brain scans], neuroscientists have worked ceaselessly to find differences between men’s and women’s brains. This research attracts lots of attention because it’s just so easy to try to link any particular brain finding to some gender difference in behavior.

But as a neuroscientist long experienced in the field, I recently completed a painstaking analysis of 30 years of research on human brain sex differences. And what I found, with the help of excellent collaborators, is that virtually none of these claims has proven reliable.