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Transsexuals – (Gender crosscoding, Gender dysphoria-person whose behavior matches the opposite sex, Gender transposition-the changing of behavior between sexes) a transsexual is defined as a person who has had an overwhelming desire to be the opposite sex. As children they are often confused about their true sexual identity. I is not until at about the age of five or six they are faced with the physical evidence of being different. For many this means growing up depressed over the fac thaeir genitals do not match their mental picture of themselves. Once a transsexual goes through a sex change they are then referred to only as mail or female.
What makes a person a transsexual is under debate. There is currently research underway to discover which gene affects the mind/body to have two very different conclusions about sexual identity. However, among the research community, there is no consensus as whether it is biochemical only or a combination of biochemistry and the environment. According to Dr. Walter Bockting, a scientific editor of the International Journal of Transgenderism. We do not know exactly how transsexualism develops," says Dr Walter Bockting, "We believe it is an interaction between nature and nurture."
But Melbourne psychiatrist, Dr Herbert Bower believed more strongly in the theory of a biological origon causing transexualism . Bower, up until the age of 90 years old worked with Australia's only gender dysphoria clinic at Monash Medical Centre. In his career he treated more than 1000 people with transsexualism and gender identity issues. He says he has searched the literature and his own patients for decades for psychological causes, such as family dynamics and is quoted as stating, "I have found no evidence at all it has anything to do with child-rearing. They are perfectly normal children with perfectly normal parents. But they say they are in the wrong body and I believe them."
Transsexual people who have attended the Melbourne clinic have recently begun to donate blood for an expanded gene hunt being carried out by Associate Professor Vincent Harley of Prince Henry's Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne and Professor Eric Vilain of the University of California (link this to http://www.isna.org/about/vilain).
Understanding of sexual development changed dramatically with the discovery in the early 1990s of the gene for maleness, known as SRY, which sits on the Y chromosome. If the SRY gene is absent, a girl develops. Not only did this extend to understanding why people have sexual orientation for the same sex (Gay or Lesbian), but also further helps the understanding for Transsexuals. If it is present, it sets off a cascade of genetic events that lead to the development of testes that then flood the foetus with male hormones. Mutations in SRY or some of the other genes can lead to males who look like females.
Recent views have also changed thinking in the scientific community in relationship to differences in the way men and women think and how their brains are structured was controlled solely by hormones. Recently, Vilain, in California, published a study that suggested sexuality was hard-wired into the brain very early in the womb. His team tested 15,000 genes in the brains of mice embryos and found 54 genes that had different levels of activity in male and female brains long before SRY was switched on and testosterone was produced.
It is these 54 genes that Vilain and Harley want to study in transsexual people from the Melbourne clinic, and work has already begun on a couple of them. Vilain says there is little evidence transsexualism is psychological, but also admits "the evidence there is a genetic component is not very compelling", either. "But we have more every day," he adds.
It includes the fact that transsexualism can run in some families, and a small Dutch study that found a small part of the post-mortem brain in male-to-female transsexual people was the same size as in women, rather than men.
The gene hunt can be justified as scientific curiosity alone, says Vilain. "We like to understand how the brain functions and an important function is to provide gender identity."
But both Harley and Vilain are also experts in intersex conditions (Organisation Intersex International – link this to http://www.intersexualite.org), where children are born with ambiguous genitalia and they say genetic tests for sexuality could improve the difficult decisions about which sex to raise these children.
The vocabulary used to differenciate amount this group is not adequate in relationship to how far you have changed your sex from one to the other. Whether an individual is just doing sexual reassignment therapy to actual surgery changes. The range of surgical procedures is extensive and from a male to female change ranges fro $8,000 to $30,000 depending on the individual procedure.
In 1952 Christine Jorgensen had the first successful sex change surgery in Denmark and since that time the actual numbers are unknown. However, DSM-IV (1994) quotes prevalence of roughly 1 in 30,000 assigned males and 1 in 100,000 assigned females seek sex reassignment surgery in the USA. The most reliable population based estimate of the incidence occurrence is from the Amsterdam Gender Dysphoria Clinic[12] The data, spanning more than four decades in which the clinic has treated roughly 95% of Dutch transsexuals, gives figures of 1:10,000 assigned males and 1:30,000 assigned females. Other bodies report figures of between 1:1000 or even 1:500. No consensus has been agreed upon and interest groups maintain this is probably because of various governments' unwillingness to fund treatment accordingly. (Wikapeda – link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsexual#Gender_terminology_for_transsexual_people)
Today, there are many sites that describe what is necessary for a full sex transistion from the actual sex change to voice lessons. In an effort to provide credible sources for more information on Transsexual options, please check the medical links above.
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