Why me? The Etiology of Transsexualism
by Raven Usher
Etiology: The science of assigning causes.
I can not count how many times I have heard a distraught transgender person utter the words, “Why me?” Sometimes they say it through a haze of confusion. Sometimes it spills out with a river of tears. Sometimes it is spit at the heavens in anger. It is always a sign of confusion.
So let us attempt to dispel some of the confusion. Why you? Because you were born this way. Do you feel like an X-man yet?
Let us talk about scientificly proven fact first. Every human embryo begins gestation as female. In half of pregnancies, a hormone is introduced during gestation. That hormone causes the embryo to mutate and become male. The body of a fetus develops separately from the nervous system. So this hormone introduction happens twice.
It happens the first time at approximately six weeks of gestation and effects the body. The vaginal opening closes and the clitoris elongates and becomes the penis. (If you look at a man’s scrotal sack you will see a line down the center. That is where the vagina sealed itself shut.) It also effects skeletal structure and body mass placement.
Five or six weeks after that change has been initiated another hormone introduction takes place. This one effects the developing central nervous system. The delay is to accommodate the nervous system’s delay in the beginning of its development. It is like building a house. You can not put up walls until the foundation is solid. The nervous system needs the solid foundation of a physical body before it can begin its own development.
For transgendered people one of those hormonal additions is weak or incomplete. In the case of transsexuals, one of the two do not happen at all. For male to female transsexuals the body gets the signal to change but the nervous system does not. So the body becomes male but the brain remains female. For female to male transsexuals it is just the opposite. The body remains female while the brain changes over.
Those are the scientifically provable facts. What is still unknown is why this happens. There is no evidence that supports any causation for the inconsistency of the mother’s body introducing or not introducing the hormones at the right time. There is plenty of supposition. And some possible causes have been ruled out.
Smoking, drinking alcohol and taking drugs during pregnancy have all been discounted. While these things do cause other birth defects later in gestation, they do not effect the introduction of hormones at such an early stage of fetal development.
The most likely causes, although they have not been proven yet, are conditions that effect the mother and her own hormone levels. These are things like depression, anxiety and high levels of stress. All of these conditions are proven to wreak havoc on a person’s body as well as their mental and emotional states. It is highly likely that if a woman has one of these conditions during the earliest stages of pregnancy, the introduction of developmental hormones could be altered or stopped all together.
The problems with proving any of these theories is the early stage of gestation when the hormone introduction happens and the low prevalence of transsexualism. It would next to impossible to be observing 30,000 developing embryos at six weeks of gestation and again at twelve weeks in the hopes of catching the one occurrence of those hormonal introductions not matching. Most women do not even realize they are pregnant until they are eight to twelve weeks along. By that time, the future has already take root in the present.
So why you? Best guess... Mom was freaking out about something when she got knocked up.
Blessed Be
by Raven Usher
Etiology: The science of assigning causes.
I can not count how many times I have heard a distraught transgender person utter the words, “Why me?” Sometimes they say it through a haze of confusion. Sometimes it spills out with a river of tears. Sometimes it is spit at the heavens in anger. It is always a sign of confusion.
So let us attempt to dispel some of the confusion. Why you? Because you were born this way. Do you feel like an X-man yet?
Let us talk about scientificly proven fact first. Every human embryo begins gestation as female. In half of pregnancies, a hormone is introduced during gestation. That hormone causes the embryo to mutate and become male. The body of a fetus develops separately from the nervous system. So this hormone introduction happens twice.
It happens the first time at approximately six weeks of gestation and effects the body. The vaginal opening closes and the clitoris elongates and becomes the penis. (If you look at a man’s scrotal sack you will see a line down the center. That is where the vagina sealed itself shut.) It also effects skeletal structure and body mass placement.
Five or six weeks after that change has been initiated another hormone introduction takes place. This one effects the developing central nervous system. The delay is to accommodate the nervous system’s delay in the beginning of its development. It is like building a house. You can not put up walls until the foundation is solid. The nervous system needs the solid foundation of a physical body before it can begin its own development.
For transgendered people one of those hormonal additions is weak or incomplete. In the case of transsexuals, one of the two do not happen at all. For male to female transsexuals the body gets the signal to change but the nervous system does not. So the body becomes male but the brain remains female. For female to male transsexuals it is just the opposite. The body remains female while the brain changes over.
Those are the scientifically provable facts. What is still unknown is why this happens. There is no evidence that supports any causation for the inconsistency of the mother’s body introducing or not introducing the hormones at the right time. There is plenty of supposition. And some possible causes have been ruled out.
Smoking, drinking alcohol and taking drugs during pregnancy have all been discounted. While these things do cause other birth defects later in gestation, they do not effect the introduction of hormones at such an early stage of fetal development.
The most likely causes, although they have not been proven yet, are conditions that effect the mother and her own hormone levels. These are things like depression, anxiety and high levels of stress. All of these conditions are proven to wreak havoc on a person’s body as well as their mental and emotional states. It is highly likely that if a woman has one of these conditions during the earliest stages of pregnancy, the introduction of developmental hormones could be altered or stopped all together.
The problems with proving any of these theories is the early stage of gestation when the hormone introduction happens and the low prevalence of transsexualism. It would next to impossible to be observing 30,000 developing embryos at six weeks of gestation and again at twelve weeks in the hopes of catching the one occurrence of those hormonal introductions not matching. Most women do not even realize they are pregnant until they are eight to twelve weeks along. By that time, the future has already take root in the present.
So why you? Best guess... Mom was freaking out about something when she got knocked up.
Blessed Be
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