Mike Penner, a sports writer for the LA Times, has decided to become a woman. He will return to the paper as Christine Daniels. He wrote a gripping personal reflection for the paper explaining his decision:
Transsexualism is a complicated and widely misunderstood medical condition. It is a natural occurrence -- unusual, no question, but natural.Recent studies have shown that such physiological factors as genetics and hormonal fluctuations during pregnancy can significantly affect how our brains are "wired" at birth.
As extensive therapy and testing have confirmed, my brain was wired female.
A transgender friend provided the best and simplest explanation I have heard: We are born with this, we fight it as long as we can, and in the end it wins.
I gave it as good a fight as I possibly could. I went more than 40 hard rounds with it. Eventually, though, you realize you are only fighting yourself and your happiness and your mental health -- a no-win situation any way you look at it.
Good for Mike/Christine. I hope he achieves some peace of mind as a woman. But I wonder about some of his assertions. It's no secret that there are physiological differences between the brains of men and women. (Reasonable people can disagree about the meaning of these physiological differences, but they still exist.) However, I had no idea that, as Mike Penner asserts, "extensive testing" can demonstrate that some males are trapped inside female brains. Is this really a possible diagnosis? I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to this sort of thing. Perhaps some readers can enlighten me?
Comments (11)
I haven't really heard of this testing, but it looks like it should be theoretically possible. From "A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality" NATURE, 378: 68-70 (1995):
"The BSTc volume in heterosexual men (2.49�0.16 mm3) was 44% larger than in heterosexual women (1.73�0.13 mm3) (P 0.005) (Fig. 3). The volume of the BSTc of heterosexual and homosexual men was found not to differ in any statistically significant way (2.81�0.20 mm3) (P=0.26). The BSTc was 62% larger in homosexual men than in heterosexual women (P 0.005)...A small volume of the BSTc (1.30�0.23 mm3) was found in the male-to-female transsexuals (Fig. 3). Its size was only 52% of that found in the reference males (P 0.005) and 46% of the BSTc of homosexual males (P 0.005). Although the mean BSTc volume in the transsexuals was even smaller than that in the female group, the difference did not reach statistical significance (P=0.13)."
From my skimming, it's not clear whether it could be conclusively determined from a small BSTc that Christine nee Mike has a female brain, but it would probably be something of a confirmation if a person already feels that they are not of their biological sex.
Posted by: ThePolynomial | April 26, 2007 2:11 PM