When did you choose to be left-handed?
Why did you choose to be left-handed, isn’t life harder for you?
Well, if you didn’t choose to be left-handed then what causes left-handedness?
Kind of silly question to ask or say, but those are all questions that are asked of me if you substitute transgender for left-handed. And the answers are all the same whether you are left-handed or transgender.
I didn’t choose to be transgender, I always knew that I should have been born a girl.
Yes, life is harder, but it beats the alternative of not to be able to be yourself and living a life that is a lie.
Just like the causes of left-handedness is not known, neither is the causes of gender identity disorder. However, just like left-handedness it is believed that it is a result of pre-natal brain development.
Here an interesting article that I found as I researched this entry…
This is from a LA Times article entitled, “What does gay look like? Science keeps trying to figure that out.”
Left hand vs. right hand. The hand you use to sign your name might have something to do with what gender you are drawn to.
The numbers: More lefties -- or at least more somewhat-ambidextrous folks -- crop up in the gay population than among straight people, several studies have shown. An analysis* of more than 23,000 men and women from North America and Europe in 2000 found that being non-right-handed seems to increase a man's chances of being gay by about 34%, and a woman's by about 90%.
What it might mean: One guess is that different-than-normal levels of testosterone in the womb -- widely theorized to play a role in determining eventual sexual orientation -- could nudge a fetus toward brain organization that favors left-handedness as well as same-sex attraction.
Another theory is that development of a fetus might be disturbed by factors such as a mother's illness, steering the fetus into being less than strictly right-handed -- and, in some cases, less than strictly heterosexual.
*From a Science Daily article, “Canadian Scientists Find More Homosexuals Left-Handed”
Very well put, Diana. I remember I was discussing the death of an Argentine actor, and every newspaper was stressing the fact that he was gay. My question was "how come that's what defines him? It's like saying he was blond or 6' tall"... Of course, and you know this well, not everybody subscribes to this line of thought, but at least I do.
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm lefty too. I don't think you can 'choose' those things. And incidentally, I know that the last five US Presidents were left-handed: Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Son Of Bush. Is Obama a lefty too?