Describe and evaluate research related to gender identity disorder. Refer to both biological and social explanations in your answer.
Gender identity disorder is a psychiatric condition listed in the DSM-V where a person feels anxious, uncertain, or persistently uncomfortable with the gender assigned to them at birth. This may lead to gender reassignment or sex change operation. Other terms can explain gender identity disorders such as gender dysphoria, transgender and transsexual. On the other hand, gender identity disorder does not include intersex conditions, which is a term used to describe an individual who is neither distinctly male nor female because of a mismatch between chromosomes and genitals. Gender dysphoria affects both males and females. According to NHS, males to females outnumber females to males by five to one.
There are biological explanations of gender identity disorder. It has been suggested that there may be a transsexual gene. Hare et al. 2009 conducted a study where they looked at the DNA of 112 MtF transsexuals and found they were more likely to have a longer version of the androgen receptor gene than in a normal sample. The effect of this abnormality is reduced activity of the male sex hormone testosterone, and this has an effect on gender development in the womb as it could under masculinized the brain.
The brain-sex theory is based on the fact that male and female brains are different, and perhaps transsexual brain does not match their genetic sex. An area in the brain is the BSTc, which is the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. The BSTc is located in the thalamus. The brain-sex theory suggests that the BSTc is abnormally enlarged in transsexual men and contains twice the number of neurons. Suggested that the size of BSTc correlates with preferred sex rather than biological sex. Zhou et al. and Kruijver studied the BSTc. Found neurons in the BSTc of MtF transsexuals were similar to females. Also, found that the number of neurons in the BSTc in FtM transsexuals was found to be in the male range. A study looked at the post-mortem of 6 MtF transsexuals who had received feminizing hormones. It was found that the BSTc was the same size as in female heterosexuals. They suggest that the hormones seemed to have reduced the size of the BSTc. This supports the argument that hormones may affect the part of the brain responsible for gender identity.
Chung et al. 2002 challenged the brain-sex theory. He studied how the volume of the BSTc varied with age in both males and females. He noted that the difference in BSTc volume between men and women does not develop until adulthood, but Lawrence 2003 stated that most transsexuals report that their feelings of gender dysphoria begin in early childhood. This, therefore, suggests that the difference found in the BSTc could not be the cause of transsexualism but might be an effect. In addition, Hulshoff Pol et al. found that transgender hormone therapy does influence the size...
