Is It In Our Genes?

There may be many reasons why we are trans and it might not just be one thing, it could be a whole combination of things.

Scientists are still trying to find answer to why some people are transgender
How do you think biological influences shape the felt sense of gender identity? 
Gay Star News
By Nigel Tan
12 July 2016

Why are girls born as girls, and boys as boys? What about an individual who is biologically female but feels or sees oneself as male, or the other way around?

Dr. Qazi Rahman who is a lead investigator into LGBT mental health at King’s College London revealed that science still can’t give a complete answer to those questions.

‘This is the key question at the moment,’ the scientist told The Guardian. ‘We know much more about how nature shapes sexual orientation, and my view of the science is that nurture does very little, if any, shaping of sexual orientation. We know next to nothing about how people come to feel transgender.’

Last year, a group of scientists had reportedly come up with a genetic test that’s able to predict for homosexuality up to a 67% accuracy rate.

What about the other third? What makes them gay?

For trans people it is different,

‘How do prenatal sex hormones shape the developing brain circuitry which controls your sense of gender identity? Where is that network?’ he continued. ‘How does it work to make this happen and how does it map out over time, from early childhood to middle childhood through to adolescence and young adulthood? And how does that become different in some people to the sex they were assigned at birth?’

On the other hand, there is also the ‘nurture’ part. Past research have shown that social conditioning can affect gender identity.

They sum it up nicely in that there could be an intersection of multiple factors,
A person’s sexual identity can also be viewed as the sum of four related aspects: 1. one’s biological sex; 2. one’s sexual orientation; 3. the gender one relates to; and 4. the gender that dominates one’s behavior.

I don’t believe that they will find “a cause” but rather a complex interaction of all four things.

Another thing to consider is the ethical question; if they do find a gene or a test to determine if a fetus will grow up to be trans or gay, will parents abort the fetus because they don’t want their child growing up trans or gay?