Biological

• Gender dysphoria refers to a feeling of extreme discomfort an individual has towards their own biological gender with feelings of wanting to change.

  Biological explanations outline factors such as genetics, hormones and brain structures.
• The first explanation is brain sex theory which suggests that the person’s brain structures are incompatible with the persons biological sex.

  The main focus of this is on parts of the brain that are dimorphic meaning they differ between males and females.

  Zhou studied a part of the brain known as the BSTc which is assumed to be fully developed by the age of 5.

  They found that the BSTc was 40 % larger in males than in females.
• There was also emphasis on post mortems which enforced the idea of brain structures.

  It was found that transgender females receiving hormones had a similar size BSTc as cisgender females.

  Kruijer also found that transgender women showed a similar number of neurons in the BSTc as cisgender women.

  This concludes that the BSTc provides evidence for the neurological basis of gender dysphoria and proposes the idea that the disorder may be predetermined even before birth.
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  This research may be socially sensitive but can be beneficial in reducing the stigma behind transgender individuals and labelling.

  By stating gender dysphoria is biological it enforces the idea of research being scientific and people are more likely to listen to science and biology over any other explanation.

  It also removes the notion of free will which helps label it as an innate feature.

  In turn this could reduce the stigma and improve the quality of life for those with gender dysphoria.
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  However, there is a question to whether the alterations to the size and volume of the BSTc cause gender dysphoria.

  Chung found that although the size appears to be determined through hormones, the hormone changes aren’t triggered until after puberty in adulthood and therefore the BSTc is not fully developed prior to the onset.

  This therefore casts doubt on the theory that brain areas cause the dysphoria and reduce its validiot.
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  Further contradictory evidence come from the findings that hormone treatments for example feminising hormones affect the size of the BSTc, causing it to shrink (Pol).

  This creates the question as to whether the dimorphic brain differences are the result of gender dysphoria or the result of hormone treatments.

  Therefore you can’t definitively say that the dimorphic differences are present in childhood and this therefore limits the validity of the explanation as the unusual size of the BSTc would be classed as a symptom and not a cause.
• There also may be a genetic basis to the disorder as Coolidge found a prevalence of gender dysphoria in 2.3 % of 157 twin pairs (96 Mz and 61 Dz) using the DSM-4.

  62 % were accounted for by a genetic variance.

  Heylens et al also compared twins diagnosed with gender dysphasia and found a 39 % concordance rate for 23 Mz twins and a 0 % concordance rate for 21 Dz twins.

  This suggests a strong heritable component for gender dysphoria.
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  Research to support this comes from Beijsterveldt et al who assessed cross gender behaviour in 14000 Dutch twins using self report data ages 7-10.

  They found cross gender behaviour was higher in Mz twins that Dz twins.

  However, self report data especially used by children has high chances of containing social desirability bias which can lead to inaccurate and unreliable results.

  However, for the most part, the research increases the validity for a genetic basis.
• However there are lots of issues with twin studies
• They tend to overestimate the contribution played by genes by assuming that twins have similar environments
• Mz twins are more likely to be treat the same as they'll have the same classes, clothes, may be confused for one another
• Therefore it is impossible to disentangle the effects of nature and nurture if Mz and Dz twins have dissimilar environments
• Also the concordance rate measures are very low compared to other disorders as gender dysphoria is statistically rare
• Therefore there is a small, unrepresentative sample that may lack generalisability