First off, I am not agender or in the gender binary area, I'm just curious as to what science says about the genetic component of people who are agender or neither male or female. I know this is a touchy question but are there any studies or any genetic information to support being agender? I know they are zeroing in on the "gay gene" but that's a sexual orientation not an actual gender. To summarize, are there any studies or genetic components supporting agender/gender binary?
Someone posted something in the news section a while back... But it looked pretty dodgy, and was written in 2008. I don' think they will ever find a "trans gene", or a "gay gene".
this. they tried it for ages but the results are assumptions that always have so many exeptions that it isn't really proving anything.The approaches also tend to be quite questionable...
Science tells us how the endocrine system works, how different body parts get sexed, and it tells us that this medicine or treatment improves group X's life while making group Y's life worse. That's about it. It's all stuff you can measure. Neuroscience, on the other hand, has things like the controversial "hard problem". If you wanna geek out, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness . The point is, after a certain point, you can only do statistical observation with psychology. Which is usually good enough if you are trying to predict "if I give someone this medicine, what will happen". It is awesome at answering "how" questions, not so much "why" or "what is this" questions. We don't have like Maxwell's equations for being trans or anything like that. Honestly though, we don't need it. Imagine there are two people that are blind for different reasons. We track down the reason one is blind. The other would benefit from the same treatment. If you go with a strict definition, "blind people have this about them", the second person isn't technically blind, even though they can't see and you can correct their vision the same way. So it is with the trans. Even if we do studies and find some common causes with a lot of people in the middle or outside, those won't necessarily cover everyone. The trans, as far as I can tell, has to do with us not accepting either hormonal or social conditioning, or both. It may very well be that some people ended up where I started when I transitioned, without any of my physical symptoms, but whose lives would improve just as much as mine has. Gender is something that, as far as I can tell, is something we learn about very early in our lives, and is very solid and not plastic for most people over the course of their lives. So whether it's nature or nurture that caused your problem, if you have a problem, you have a problem. So I recommend not tracking down causes, and just defining yourself. It's hard, I know, when the world is telling you you aren't what you know you are deep down. You want to find something they can't argue with, so that they can run their mouths and chase all the windmills so to speak that they want. But I had a conversation with a friend recently, and they brought up a very good point. "I am ___" will always be more powerful than "I have ___, ___, and ___ about me, and ___ has all those traits, so I am ___". The first, someone else can say "no you aren't". What else can they say? It's not really any of their business. The conversation stops. You don't have to participate. The second, you start out making excuses and trying to reason with people that, more often than not, can't be reasoned with anyway. Most people trying to tell you you are something you aren't, are starting from a very emotional place. They are terrified of you living your life the way you see fit. You can't argue against emotions with facts. You can and should argue with them by setting clear boundaries. The fact is, you have little to gain from telling people you are _____. You will definitely be misunderstood, you will definitely lose friends. The only gain possible is if this accurately describes you. It means that you'll be able to get in honest, compatible, fulfilling relationships with other people. It means that you won't go to work feeling ashamed or like you have a terrible secret, afraid every day. Other people that lie and try to appropriate your label, won't be able to walk the walk day in and day out. It will just be loss for them. "Agender" is just a word. Like transgender or woman or space alien. If this describes your reality, then it does. It's your reality, and not having secrets, and being able to make connections with other people, and not being constantly miserable or having your body work against you, that matter. It's about figuring out what your problems are and solving them. ---------- Post added 10th Apr 2015 at 10:58 AM ---------- Just an aside, I did not want to imply that you had to have a medical problem like I have to be trans. You sure don't. Some people under our umbrella get by just fine without any medicine. I personally had a lot of problems dealing with testosterone, and took to estrogen like a fish to water. But some of us have described being trans as an overmedicalized problem, and I tend to agree. There have been trans people since always, and modern medicine to help since recently. People throughout the centuries have had coping mechanisms. Acting is a wonderful one, for example; all Shakespearean parts were played by men. I believe some of us have always needed medicine. There used to be social castes that offered castration, which I'm sure was a huge benefit to some of us back then. The point is, some of us really, really need medicine, and some of us really, really don't. So don't feel like you are any less valid at all if you are in the second category.
From what we know about how the brain masculinizes and feminizes as a result of hormonal exposure during fetal developing, it's well within the realms of current scientific understanding that an agender brain is possible, as is a brain that has partially masculinized and partially feminized. This phenomenon is very well understood in rodents, and it's only a matter of time before we also figure out the (vastly more complex) human brain as well.
I cannot remember the name of the article or even where I found it, but I remember seeing something like this. According to it, a woman's brain had more of, say structure A(I'm so sorry I forgot all the terms as this was a while back) and a male's had more of structure B. In the study for trans people it said someone who was a trans female, born male, had more of structure A rather than B, so the way their brain acted didn't match the sex of their birth. I'm not sure how that would play into agender/demi/et cetera orientations, but it was interesting. Sidenote, with the 'gay gene' thing. I think that there isn't necessrily a gene thats recessive until a certain point in the family line that makes them gay, but I kind of think that it could be a genetic thing. I don't really know though, because orientations can change. Just something else I thought of when I read that.
