Our Stories Are The Same

In the news media when we tell our stories there are minor variations from person to person. When the news reports about a child who transitions the details may be slightly different but the basic narratives are the same. At a very early age we know we are somehow not the gender they assigned to us at birth, but this story is slight different because she was a twin.

Becoming Nicole
They were born identical twin boys, but one always felt he was a girl
The Washington Post
Story by Amy Ellis Nutt
Published on October 19, 2015

They were identical twin boys, Wyatt and Jonas Maines, adopted at birth in 1997 by middle-class, conservative parents. Healthy and happy, they were physically indistinguishable from each other, but even as infants their personalities seemed to diverge.

By the age of 2, when the boys were just learning to speak, Wyatt asked his mother, “When do I get to be a girl?” and “When will my penis fall off?” It was the beginning of a journey through questions of gender that would challenge a mother to find ways to help her child, even as the father pushed back. The father would learn the truest meaning of family only after his wife felt forced to file a lawsuit against the twins’ elementary school, and when Jonas told him, at age 9, “Face it, Dad, you have a son and a daughter.”

Nicole and Jonas, who grew up primarily in Maine, just turned 18. In “Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family,” published this week by Random House and excerpted below, Washington Post science writer Amy Ellis Nutt explores the remarkable story of an ordinary family navigating its way through extraordinary times.

This story is told over and over again by trans children what is different now than when I grew up is society is now more aware to trans children, parents are learning what to do if their child says that they should be a boy or girl instead of what the doctor said when they wacked them on their behinds.

What I like about the article is that it goes on to say,

There is no shortage of only slightly more sophisticated theories today. But what we know for sure is that we all begin life essentially genderless, at least in terms of sexual anatomy. The last of our 23 pairs of chromosomes makes us either genetic males (XY) or genetic females (XX). But there are at least 50 genes that play a part in sexual identity development and are expressed at different levels early on.

Sexual anatomy, however, is determined in large part by hormones. All of us begin, in utero, with an opening next to the anus and a kind of genital “bud.’’ The addition of testosterone drives the fetus in the male direction. An inhibiting hormone prevents males from developing internal female reproductive organs. Without testosterone, the embryo develops in the female direction.

Sexual differentiation of the genitals happens at about six weeks, but the sexual differentiation of the brain, including gender identity and the setting of our gender behavior, is, at least partly, a distinct process. Again, hormones play the crucial role, with surges of testosterone indirectly “masculinizing” the brains of some fetuses, causing subtle but distinct differences in brain structure and functional activity.
[…]
In some ways, the brain and the body are two very different aspects of what it means to be human, especially when it comes to sex and gender. Who we are, male or female, is a brain process, but what we look like at birth, what we develop into at puberty, who we are attracted to and how we act — male, female or something in between — are all embedded in different groups of brain cells with different patterns of growth and activity. Ultimately gender identity is the result of biological processes and is a function of the interplay between sex hormones and the developing brain, and because it is a process that takes place over time, in utero, it can be influenced by any number of environmental effects.

We also know that twins in the uterus do not develop the same, on the website about pregnancy it has this to say about twins growth rates.

During a pregnancy with twins or higher order levels of multiples, it's normal for the babies to be slightly different sizes. If the difference in size gets too large, your provider might start to get concerned.

Once the size difference reaches 15 to 25 percent, the babies are said to have "discordant fetal growth." The growth difference can have a number of causes including genetic, intra-uterine growth syndrome and twin-to-twin-transfusion. Your doctor will watch the babies closely and could suggest an early induction or cesarean.

So even though they are identical twins there are many factors that affect their development and that is why one twin can be trans and the other twin is cis.