Coyote wrote:Well, I've always placed my point of view on what a friend told me, way back when I was learning, "TA-DAA", that gay people are, you know, regular people. He said that "sex is what's between your legs; gender is what's between your ears". I've heard that from others since, and expanded what I think I understand to include such things as genderqueer and other outlooks.
It also makes me wonder how I'd relate to the "Pregnant Man" that's been in the news. You have a person who identifies as male, and is undergoing GRS, but halts the process to have a baby (an inherently female process) and is now having another baby...
I hope I'm not opening up a can of worms, but I think if the folks here on this board who know and live this stuff could compose a sort of quick-reference FAQ or brief glossary it would be helpful. Some of us don't even know what is or isn't offensive, or feel uncomfortable asking for concern of raising offense...
If GALE and others could make something up, say a Sticky in the ARSE forum, it would help a lot.
Well, sex isn't what's between your legs, in short--it's what is in your head, too. We now know that sexual identity is far more biological than might have previously been ascribed, the result of some real differences in the brain
That said, the weirdoes (there are weirdos in every subculture group) and flamboyant sorts are always the ones that garner the most attention, leaving people like me who as you well know is just another tall blonde girl inherently less "sexy" to the news articles of the day.
Speaking of which:
Science wrote:Gender and the Brain
The largest ever genetic study of male-to-female transexuals has provided a hint -- albiet a faint one -- as to how gender is embedded in the brain. A team led by molecular genetcist Vincent Harliey of the Monasy Medical Centre in Melbourne, Australia, analyzed versions of three hormone-related genes in 112 white male-to-female transsexuals recruited in Melbourne and Los Angeles, California. The findings were compared with DNA samples from 258 nontranssexual males. Categorizing the alleles as either "short" or "long", they found that the transsexuals had more long alleles for the androgen receptor ghene, they reported online last week in /Biological Psychiatry/. Longer alleles, they explain, inhibit receptor activity, leading to less effective prenatal testostrone signaling. Although the effect is weak -- 55% of the transexuals had the long allele, compared with 47% of the controls -- the researchers suggest it could play a role in incomplete masculinization of the brain during early development.
