Adventures Of An Aging Trans Woman

Yes, I realize that’s an odd juxtaposition. Give me a chance, and I’ll make the connection.

Thanks to a couple of relatively disparate conversations that happened to come into juxtaposition time wise, I have been thinking about some medical issues recently.

A  good while back, (June 2013) I shared (to my Google + account) an interesting news bit about the impending transition of a news helicopter reporter named Bob Tur. A friend reshared that post to a private transgender community on G+, where another friend stumbled upon it last night.

In this interview, Bob / Zoey (she asked to intersperse her names) mentioned biological bases for transsexuality, but did not elaborate. When my friend Jane saw that, she asked if there were any studies to support it. In short, yes there are, but they are very small studies in terms of persons included. One of the most interesting of these studies is

“A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality” http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v378/n6552/abs/378068a0.html

Wikipedia links to other studies as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexualism

I’ve been convinced pretty much since I learned of the existence of transsexuality that it must have a biologic basis. Of course, we want to believe that, so I acknowledge confirmation bias in myself. That said, having this come up in my notifications after all this time was a trigger to another thought process I’ve been dealing with for some time.

Many of you know that I suffer from fibromyalgia, which is a generalized pain disorder, thought to be rooted in an abnormality of the nervous system. Here’s where that gets interesting with regards to me. The disorder in question is rare in men. It’s prevalence is 3.4% female, 0.5% male. Now, that’s where it gets interesting to me. Men seldom ever have fibro, women much more often.

I’m MTF transsexual, which per the study mentioned earlier, may have a basis in neurologic differences. Fibro is seven times more common in women, is believed to be neurologically based as well. Hmmm… My fibro is, in my mind, another data point indicating toward the biologic basis for transsexuality.

So, let’s discuss. 🙂

Tags: being a woman, biology, transition