Do you think gender identity is completely mental and personal or is it reliant

1. 59

   Oldskool903posted 10 years ago

   Do you think gender identity is completely mental and personal or is it reliant on upbringing?
   
   There is a new show called transgender children and it follows young children who believe they were born in the wrong body. Some children were brought up in very feminine or masculine atmospheres which possibly effected their transition. On the other hand some were brought up in the social norm. So the question arises...
   
   

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2. 71

   dashingscorpioposted 10 years ago

   How someone feels about them self probably is the result of a lot of things. Percentage wise there are very few people that feel they were born in the wrong body. In fact gays and lesbians make up less than 5% of the population and their parents are heterosexual.
   This would suggest to me there is something beyond environment.

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   1. 60

      Merrin LeClairposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Actually LGBQ people make up more than 10% of the population

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   2. 71

      dashingscorpioposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I guess it depends which study you read. I was referring to percentage in the U.S. The Williams Institute estimates there are more than 8 million adults in the US who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual, comprising (3.5%) of the adult population.

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   3. 60

      Merrin LeClairposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Ah I see. That study determined what percentage of the population was in a same sex relationship, rather than what percentage identified as LGB.

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3. 60

   Merrin LeClairposted 10 years ago

   Every part of our identities relies on both our genetics/biology and our environment/upbringing. How we think about gender is taught to us by the people around us. Our parents, friends, etc teach us what gender means, they tell us what being a boy is, or what being a girl is.
   
   Who we are though, is a very personal thing. It's up to us to understand what we identify with. We are the ones who understand how we feel about things, how we feel about ourselves, and who we think we are.
   
   What I'm basically saying is this: society tells us what gender is and what it means, but we are the ones to figure out how it relates to us.
   
   I think its important to point out that many of these children and many trans* people in general have gender/body dysphoria. This is when ones body does not match up to how one thinks of themself, to an extent that can be extremely traumatic.

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4. 69

   Larry Copanoposted 9 years ago

   I'm a transman, and I was brought up in a very normal "white picket house".  They've done studies on the effect of environment and came up with nothing conclusive.
   
   I 49 years old, and back when I was born the world was quite sexist against women.  My father was just like Archie Bunker!  I would think that if environment caused us to gender-identify with the 'wrong' sex, that more females in my era would transition just to get away from sexism.  In fact, back in the days when women were thought of as property, I'm surprised that they ALL didn't don men's clothes and rebel!

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