So ... Does this indicate that you CAN be 'born the wrong gender'?

I do agree with micah that a more gender fluid society would be a good thing

toddler is still awake and we are on the 12th episode of Pepper Pig, sob

Well I can certainly see that liking dresses and pink is clearly socialised.

But why would it follow that gender identity doesn't exist?
Clearly feeling that you are male when you are in a female body does cause issues for those it affects.

• oops should have said boys & girls or children.

Also the condition these boys suffered from is not an intersex condition. It's an abnormality of development.

bertie it's a small sample size because the condition is extremely rare.
If you want to look at other cases just look up the references listed at the end of the study.

garrick obviously there's no control group. To do any work with control groups you need to look at animal studies.
There's loads of data on this.

flora Ok I'll admit I'm not getting it.

It sounds like you have no issue with a person feeling like a male or a female (I think I called this gender identity, not really sure what to call it) being mostly biologically based.

But at the same time you don't think it really exists?

Sorry I'm not putting that across very well (it's late and the toddler is sick and watch wall to wall Peppa Pig is sapping my strength).

I think trans people would still exist in a gender equal society, yes.

I don't agree with labelling children as "trans" "other" or whatever because the don't stick rigidly to societies gender roles.

If society was more gender fluid children could explore their interests and likes without thinking if they like girl things then they must be a girl.

I wanted to be a boy for a long time. In reality it was because I didn't want to wear dresses, be pretty, draw, play with dolls etc. I honestly thought in my 4 year old brain the only way I'd get to do fun stuff like climb trees, wear trousers, wrestle, ride a bmx etc was if I were a boy.

THanks demented. I think so too, but somehow (I'm not sure why - there's certainly no basis for this belief!) I think the distress would be less...

Not to mention that a sample size of 14 is so small it is ludicrous. You can;t draw any conclusions from that - people stating that it "worked" for five people are just as valid as stating that it "failed" for eight. It's far too small - individual circumstances massively skew the results, and you can't generalise. In addition, even with a larger number this was not a randomised sample of the population, it begins with intersex persons which might also affect the results.

I don't think that you can argue any kind of study at all, TBH. The few that ever existed were small in scope and ethically and methodologically dubious. Ethical concerns now prevent scientists from repeating any similar experiments so it will have to remain a mystery. The study shows nothing more than confirmation bias, really. As you can see on this thread two separate people have drawn entirely different conclusions from it.

So yes. (Sorry posted too soon before)

I think there would still be people with sex dysphoria.

If we had a society where men or women could wear what the fuck they liked clothes wise (decency rules permitting and being identical for both sexes), children could play with whatever toys they wanted, and men and women were truly equal.... Would there still be trans people?

Gender as in "Girls love pink and play tea party games, they are soft and gentle, then they grow up and cook/clean" etc is entirely socially constructed.

Gender identity as in "I know I am a woman" is the brain knowing what sex the body is, and that is not a social construct.

I think the English language is confusing on this subject and can do with better descriptors. It might be an idea to call it "sex identity" rather than gender identity, because what the brain is passing judgement on is whether or not the body is male or female (erroneously, in the case of trans people) and not whether it fits into the society's view of one gender or another.

As such, I am not at all surprised that studies show transwomen's brains are similar to women's in some respects - it is expected to find a neurological basis for such discrepancy between a person's perception of himself and the reality. Similarly, it is to be expected that Bruce Reimer continued to believe himself a man despite undergoing GRS as a baby and being raised as a girl - he was nothing other than a castrated man.

Did the female patients have their ovaries removed? Can't compare if not.

Also 5 of the children that identified as male only did so after being told of their condition. Only 2 spontaneously identified as male.

As demented said, parents and dr's knew so hardly double blind controlled trial. Lots of children say "I want to be a boy/wish I were a boy" but the parents will have taken far more notice of it. Parents might well have been more tolerant of "boy" behaviour and less likely to discourage it than they would a girl.

There is no way to ethically trial this subject so no publication will ever be conclusive.

I honestly can't see how you could read that trial and think feeling like you belong to one gender or another is just due to how you are socialised.

I don't think anyone on this thread has proposed that. Perhaps more like this.

One other thought. Until females and males are treated completely equally, biological differences aside obviously, that kind of study can never be unbiased. We will never know if the born boy, raised as a girl, 'identifies as male' because they want to do the things that society calls masculine.

Just last week, my nephew was round and he really liked a flowery gift bag I had. I said he could have it. Mil (his nan) immediately pipes up "No you can't have that. That's too pretty for a boy." I made sure he went home with the bag but he's also taken the message that he shouldn't really like that, that it's a girl thing to like.

I'm not saying that is going to have any deep impact on his life, but it's a constant drip, drip of messages that children get from birth and it does affect them.

I honestly can't see how you could read that trial and think feeling like you belong to one gender or another is just due to how you are socialised.

I see that this study may have something to say about sex, not about gender.

Also the parents knew the truth. We cannot say for sure this had no influence on their parenting and what affects this may have had on the children.

It's not just a one off trial - there are others that point towards the importance of hormonal influences in the womb on sexuality and gender identity.

A few highlights from the trial

• the boys all suffered a rare disorder that affected physical development in the pelvis (including no/exceptionally small penis).

• they had normal testes so would have had normal hormonal levels in the womb

• male foetuses produce large amounts of testosterone in the womb in the first trimester (females do not have this large surge). This is important for the growth of male physical structures (eg penis) but also is thought to have developmental effects on the brain.

• 13 of the boys were reassigned before they were 2 weeks old. 1 when he was 12 weeks old (obviously testes were removed)

• so all 14 reassigned children were reassigned very early.

• of the 16 entered into the trial (2 were not reassigned). 8 identified as male.

• of the 5 who reported being happy as a female none of them had been told their birth sex (it was felt this could undermine their identity)

• of all 16 kids only one of them had never expressed an interest in becoming male.

The author of the trial also discusses female patients suffering from the same disorder (problems in the development of structures within the pelvis but ovaries were ok).
They also required a lot of medical intervention but they developed as female in the womb and were also raised and socialised as female,
As a group they don't have gender identity issues, whereas the boys raised as girls clearly did.

I honestly can't see how you could read that trial and think feeling like you belong to one gender or another is just due to how you are socialised.

demented read the trial and then see what you think.

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022236#references

Only 5 of these subjects still identified as female as teenagers. Whether you feel male or female is clearly not just socialisation.

I disagree that you can conclusively draw that from this case.