We are the cornerstone of any meaningful debate that strives to establish if greatness is made or if greatness is born.
The transgender body, ostensibly born as one sex while endowed with the invitation to someday decompose as another, offers more answers about human nature than the armamentarium of Abrahamic religion and the typewriter, or rather, wax tablet, of Dr. Phil and others whose brains manufacture oatmeal instead of grey matter.
I want to take a moment to separate the sigmas and epsilons of my predecessors from the "P's" and "Q's," and still, to eradicate the politically correct jargon-fuck of an alphabet soup that the LGBT acronym has become so that we can have a scientific conversation about gender identity, one that highlights the assets of the transgender individual and the wisdom embodied by those who have lived as both sexes. From a scientific standpoint, transition is a powerful vehicle for significant physiological change, a lightening bolt that sifts through the sky and splits everything around it into a before and an after.
My chemical transition has facilitated so many personal changes that for the purpose of brevity, I cannot even begin to list them.
Prior to taking testosterone, while my true interests, moods, aggression levels, and sex drive fell within the range of what would be considered male typical, these traits still developed against the backdrop of a female physiology. All of my organs and neural circuitry were bathed in the same currents that flowed through Cleopatra.
While I identified fully as a man, I sought to isolate my more feminine traits and accommodate their presence by rejecting the dichotomous gender model that contemporary society subscribes to. And while I fully embrace the beauty of gender variance and defend the existence of a gender continuum, I am compelled to report that since taking testosterone, I am more inclined to incorporate those feminine traits into a patriarchal umbrella that engulfs these attributes rather than ostracizes them from the shadow's reach. That is, the male chemical has catalyzed the development of my true self by substituting masculinized equivalents for female traits.
I used to think that emotions were basic, primal, and universal. The old me would have asserted that, indeed, tears blur the lines of gender into pastel shades. People cried in varying degrees, I thought, with parts of them that are male, and parts of them that are female. To harbor a mix of male and female attributes, I maintained, was to be extricated from the casket nailed shut by gender conformity. And sorrow was a gourmet tea, rich with herbs and other halves.
The dramatic revisions that have been made to my body as well as my emotional faculties serve as a reminder that this is not the case, and that the read-only biological template sponsored by liberals and progressives alike is, ironically, as backwards as whatever word processing technology Bill O'Reilley might be employing these days.
The paucity of mere references to the transgender individual in contemporary psychological and neuroscientific research is alarming. Note the vivacity with which such an individual opposes the assignment of a biological sex at birth and the degree to which he or she feels as though their autonomy has rudely been imposed upon. Like a recalcitrant state, he or she rebels against an authority that has been instituted among men, presumably cisgendered men, and consequently, is not equipped to infer the grievances of the incongruous.
This internal struggle strongly suggests that men and women are inherently different. If these differences were not so salient, then the horror elicited by being born in the wrong body would not be analogous to sustaining some awful birth defect.
Thus, the transgender struggle heavily insinuates that society must altogether scrap this politically correct facade and understand that diversity is not to be equated with deficiencies. It is impossible to ignore the gender differences that have been elucidated by discoveries made in the fields of neuroscience, genetics, and general biology. Inherent biological differences between the sexes need not be equated with inferiority. In fact, basic evolutionary theory recognizes that variety is an advantage for any species, as genetic diversity ensures adaptability in the face of environmental change. Thus, specialization should be seen as a strength, not a flaw.
Any researcher concerned with the study of gender needs to step away from the drama and painfully contrived theories generated by the Real Housewives of Social Psychology.
Consider, for a moment, a biological approach to gender, one that gives rise to an appreciation of physiological differences between cisgendered men and women.
For example, sex differences in the anatomy of the eye suggest that boys are prewired to be interested in motion and girls are prewired to be interested in faces. This explanation is conducive to the results of one experiment in which male babies fresh from the delivery room were more than twice as likely to look at a dangling mobile, while female babies were more likely to look at a young women smiling at them.
The retinas of almost every male animal are significantly thicker than those of their female counterparts because they contain a much higher concentration of "M" (magnocellular) cells, which receive input from the color-blind rods and detect motion. On the contrary, female retinas are dominated by "P" (parvocellular) cells, which receive input from photosensitive cones and detect information about texture and color. They are more involved in object identification than "M" cells. At very young ages, even before they have any conception of gender, girls prefer dolls and boys prefer trucks or cars. When they reach school age, cisgendered girls tend to draw people and use warm colors in their pictures. Cisgendered boys tend to portray verbs, such as vehicles in motion, and use very little color.
I have come across dozens of experiments that aim to uncover discrepancies between the genders. But in all of my reading, I have yet to encounter one thinker who has espoused the revelation I have had in regards to the transgender individual and empirical design.
The transgender individual that resorts to chemical means in order to transition is a researcher's dream. I will tell you right now that hormones affect everything.
Absolutely everything. Aside from total fat redistribution, voice deepening, increase in muscle mass, and the masculinization of my figure as well as my face, the manner in which I experience and express emotion has shifted markedly. I will assert that the addition of these new dimensions to my character can unquestionably be attributed to testosterone.
Clearly, we can learn a shitload about gender by studying a transgender person during the course of his or her chemical transition. But what I want the scientific community to realize is that transgender people offer an incredibly rare and invaluable opportunity to learn about gender differences through the lens of the ideal experiment.
Many researchers employ the within-subjects design because it offers fundamental advantages. In this type of experiment, the same subject is exposed to more than one treatment. In this case, we would administer brain scans, surveys, and standardized tests aimed at capturing the cognitive and emotional performance of an individual before, during, and after he or she undergoes hormonal therapy. Using the same subjects for each condition reduces the variance associated with individual differences in intelligence, genetic makeup, environmental influences, diet, sleeping schedule, and any other confounding variable imaginable. It also reduces the probability of beta error and increases statistical power by increasing the number of subjects than would be used in other experimental designs.
Unlike every other study about gender, this one would feature participants that have each been exposed to both conditions: pre-transition and post-transition. One sex before, one sex after. Because every other biological and environmental factor is being held constant, all subsequent changes in physiology, personality, and emotion can be attributed to the only variable that is being manipulated: the dominant hormone that is circulating throughout one's body.
Oh, just think of the untapped potential that an entire population has to offer! Isn't it monstrous that, rather than appreciate the invaluable contributions that transgender people can make to scientific and psychological literature, we segregate them inside a "greater-than" inequality on a pie chart representing unemployment and discrimination rates?
In addition to wondering why some cartoon women have coniferous boobs, I beg the question as to how the scientific community has not yet realized our value as living, exquisite experimental designs?
Transgender people don't simply represent the next frontier in civil rights. They represent cutting edge research endeavors in a range of scientific fields. In a country where injustice is as incontrovertible as Independence Day, the fireworks that we throw in peoples' faces need to be put to better use. I will not be placated by playing dress up. I am going to initiate something that is even stronger than political change; I am going to study the body, the most potent of social constituents, and publish my findings through an enriched understanding of the human race. In a culture where we are told that attitude is everything, I WILL squint, not with the eyes of an optimist, but with those of a scientist, until wish bones snap into a size that is favorable to me.
It is time to show some fucking respect for the transgender individual.
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