Atypical gender development

• Gender dysphoria definition

   the distress a person experiences when their gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth, leading to a strong desire to change their physical characteristics or be treated as the other gender.
• Biological explanation of GID: Brain sex theory

  • One explanation is the brain structure. The bed nucleus of the stria terminals is around 40% larger in males than in females. This area of the brain is fully developed by the age of 5. Its proposed that the size of the BST correlates with the preferred sex rather than genetic sex. Zhou et al conducted 6 port-mortems on transgender individuals who went from a male to a female. The bed nucleus of the stria terminals was a similar size to than in a female brain.
• Biological explanation of GID: Genetic factors

  • Coolidge assessed 157 twin pairs (96 MZ, 61 DZ). Found that 62% of the variance could be accounted for by genetic factors.
  • Suggests there's strong heritable component to gender dysphoria.
  • Similarly, Heylens compared 23 MZ twins with 21 DZ twins - one of each pair was diagnosed with GD.
  • Found that nine(39%) of MZ were concordant for GD compared to none of the DZ's which indicated a role for gender factors in development of GI.
• Social psychological explanations of GID - psychoanalytic theory

  • Ovesey and Person argue that GID in males is a result of extreme separation anxiety before their gender identity has been established. The child fantasises a symbiotic fusion with their mother (the child tries to take their mother's identity) to relieve anxiety and also remove the danger of this separation. The child then 'becomes the mother'
  • Stoller - reports that in interviews, GD biological males displayed overly close relationships with their mothers, suggesting stronger female identification - conflicting gender identity in the long term.
• Social psychological explanations of GID - cognitive explanation

  • Liben and Bigler propose an extension of gender schema theory that focuses on individual differences. Its known as the 'Dual Pathway':
  • One pathway is gender development being affected by schema.
  • the second is the 'personal pathway' and focuses on gender development being affected by the child's own activities and interests. If this pathway is dominant, this may cause the schema to be affected, leading to androgyny or GID in a minority of children.
• AO3 - Weakness - BST - contradictory evidence for it being the cause of GID

  • BST claims that by the age of 5 a persons BTSc is fully formed therefore suggesting that any gender reassignment treatment would have no effect on the size of it. however Pol et al found that transgender hormone therapy affected the size of the bed nucleus of the stria terminals. (BTSc)
  • Therefore the differences found in the size of the BTSc may be due to the gender reassignment hormones rather than being a cause of GID.
• AO3- Weakness of the twin study - findings are inconclusive

  • For example, study conducted by Heylens et al found a 39% concordance rate for GID. this % isn't very high, which questions if other factors are more prominent. e.g psychologists need to consider the impact that nurture may have on a set of twins. Firstly, most sets of twins will have huge influences on each other in terms of the behaviours and attitudes they show. Also, environmental conditions would've been similar so potential influence on gender identity?
  • Therefore findings are inconclusive, and the biological explanation is reductionist as its not taking into account environmental factors that may be influencing the findings.
• ao3- Limitation - research done by Ovesey and Person doesn't account for psychoanalytic cause of GID in females - only applies to male transgender individuals.

  • This is clear as their study explains the effects of separation anxiety on males only, failing to acknowledge possible causes for female transgender individuals. There's also research that questions the cause of GID identified by Ovesey and Person. Reker argues that GID in males is more likely to be caused by an absent father rather than separation from the mother.
  • Therefore due to research in the same area having different findings, this suggests the theory lacks validity.