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In the early 1950s, Dr. Harry Benjamin
described a syndrome to the general
medical community where men and women
expressed a strong and on-going desire to
live and be accepted as a member of the
apparently opposite sex. He
described men and women who experienced a
persistent and strong discomfort
with their anatomical sex. They also
expressed a strong and persistent
wish to undergo hormonal treatment and
surgery to achieve a sense of congruence
with the sex they knew themselves to
be.
Benjamin advocated a compassionate
treatment of the condition and
favoured a biological explanation,
believing genetic and endocrine systems
must provide a "fertile soil" for
environmental influences (Benjamin, 1953).
Four years later, Gillies and Millard
(1957) suggested that transsexualism
should be classified as an intersex
condition.
In 1985, a review of research
concluded it was likely to be biology
which accounted for gender identity
development (Hoenig, 1985).
In 1988 a summary of Hoenig's
work and other medical views, concluded
there is an overall weight of evidence to
suggest a fundamental biological basis to
gender identity formation within the brain
(Docter, 1988).
In 1993, Louis Gooren described
the sexual dimorphic development of
the brain taking place in the first years
after birth where the "criteria of sex
(chromosomal, gonadal, and genital)" does
not follow the expected development.
A year later (1994), John Money
proposed several factors or a
multi-factorial basis to this development
being "genetic, prenatal hormonal,
postnatal social, and postpubertal
hormonal determinants".
In 1995, study results published
in Nature supported the hypothesis
that the development of gender identity
was due to interaction between the
developing brain and sex hormones.
In 2003, the Gender
Identity Research and Education Society
(GIRES, UK) ran a small symposium in
London, chaired by Prof. Milton Diamond
and included a number of specialists in
transsexualism. This report summarising
the research to date into transsexuliam
and neurobiological structures is
available from the GIRES website -
Atypical
Gender Development – A Review,
2004.
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Conclusion —
There has been considerable tension
between the scientific and social
theorists as to the aetiology of
transsexualism over the years.
Rachael Wallbank, Australia's leading
legal practitioner in the area of
transsexualism states:
"There will be no
conclusive ‘scientific proof’ of
the causation of transsexualism until
medical science can identify and ratify
the sexual differentiation of the human
brain and/or genetic identifiers for
transsexualism in living human
beings."(2004). Even so,
"[t]he
weight of argument is now very firmly on
the side of those who conceive of it as a
biological condition, rather than a
psychological one, so much so that a
biological basis is now accepted as a fact
proven to the civil standard under
Australia’s common law."
(Gurney, 2004).
Prof Gooren, world expert on
transsexualism explains (1993):
"It has always been
assumed that the sexual differentiation
was completed with the formation of the
external genitalia. But it is NOT. Since
the beginning of this century we have
known that the brain, too, undergoes a
sexual differentiation....Three areas of
the brain have now been documented as
being sex-dimorphic. One of them is the
so-called sex-dimorphic nucleus in the
lower part of the brain, the hypothalamus.
Surprisingly, the sex difference becomes
manifest only 3 to 4 years after birth.
This is amazing information. Long after
you were born and after your sex had been
determined by the criterion of the
external genitalia, your brain still had a
long way to go to become sexually
differentiated; it does not do so not
before the age of 3 to 4 years. These
scientific findings may shed light on the
problem of transsexualism where we find a
contradiction between the genital sex on
the one hand and the gender identity on
the other hand."
Prof. Diamond, professor of anatomy and
reproductive biology at the University of
Hawaii is known for his research on the
origins of sexual identity states (2000):
"Transsexuals, who I
believe are intersexed, have the body and
genitals of one sex and the brain of the
other making reconciliation of their
sexual and gender identities problematic.
They solve their problems of reconciling,
their disparate sexual identity and gender
identity, by saying, in essence, "Don't
change my mind; change my
body."
Based on history, transsexualism cannot
be overcome by contrary socialisation nor
psychological or psychiatric treatments.
Based on current understanding, it appears
to be a natural variation in human
development.
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History of Transsexualism
