I had a chance to write about Gender when Bruce Jenner announced he was a woman at heart after the age of 60 and after two marriages and six children.
I have had a chance to reflect on this process more, as the world view of such things has transformed also and a lot of people are "coming out of the closet" as it were. From my medical knowledge and training when all these LGBT etc. were considered abnormalities (so I was taught). Mind you I did consider them as such but had no problems considering them any more different than a person with short stature or too tall stature or too fat or too thin and so were these persons whose brains functioned in the normal way as they would in any human being and I still hold my opinion.
Medically speaking here is how things develop:
There are these levels one must consider in the development of Man;
1. Genetic make-up. Genes contain all the information about the person each one has its own content of molecules specific for functions/structure etc.
2. Chromosomes are the structures containing the genes. They consist of half (22+ XY) from the father and other half (22+ XX) from the mother. Out of them, one is a pair of XX (female offspring) chromosomes contains one X from father and one from mother. For a male offspring of course the y is from father and X from mother.
3. Gonads; During development in the womb the fetus begins its sexual structure from the group of cells called Gonads -undifferentiated sex at this time
4. Hormones: As "hormones" are secreted from developing structures the gonads start taking shape of male or female sex organs
5. Anatomy: the full sex characters formed; we have a boy or a girl
6. Boy or girl brought up in surroundings peculiar to their own parents and family and culture giving shape to the minds of these persons who develop their own identity as boy or girl (Gender identity)or whatever else influenced by many factors over and above the ones stated above.
7. Psyche: How the person forms his/her identity (gender identity) and how he/she behaves growing up as given in #6 above
So we can see the gender identity is influenced by Nature (Biological anatomy and physiology depending on how it is functioning) as well as "nurture" (social learning+ other factors of the culture and family)
As we can see there are so many levels where something may go "wrong" or away from the norm and result in "disturbance" of one kind or the other. Genes carry info like some inherited disease and Chromosomes have their own problems resulting in all kinds of disorders etc. Then during development things can change in gonads or sex organs. So there are multitudes of abnormalities some minimal some big and some in between
So the first thing in a child showing signs of "disturbance' we need to see if there is something the matter in these levels and have tests performed to see if some change is causing homosexuality for instance. Of course, there will be somewhere nothing is found abnormal and we end up saying this psychological. if psychological is not considered abnormal then we say all is normal but the person is so inclined from cultural or family influences
I am saying all this because if we dont pay attention to all this detail some 'diseases will go undiagnosed under the label of LGBT which by itself has no meaning except socially speaking and that all has now happened that socially it is all acceptable which is not bad
Please visit my Urdu blog at خیالات و احساسات
I have had a chance to reflect on this process more, as the world view of such things has transformed also and a lot of people are "coming out of the closet" as it were. From my medical knowledge and training when all these LGBT etc. were considered abnormalities (so I was taught). Mind you I did consider them as such but had no problems considering them any more different than a person with short stature or too tall stature or too fat or too thin and so were these persons whose brains functioned in the normal way as they would in any human being and I still hold my opinion.
Medically speaking here is how things develop:
There are these levels one must consider in the development of Man;
1. Genetic make-up. Genes contain all the information about the person each one has its own content of molecules specific for functions/structure etc.
2. Chromosomes are the structures containing the genes. They consist of half (22+ XY) from the father and other half (22+ XX) from the mother. Out of them, one is a pair of XX (female offspring) chromosomes contains one X from father and one from mother. For a male offspring of course the y is from father and X from mother.
3. Gonads; During development in the womb the fetus begins its sexual structure from the group of cells called Gonads -undifferentiated sex at this time
4. Hormones: As "hormones" are secreted from developing structures the gonads start taking shape of male or female sex organs
5. Anatomy: the full sex characters formed; we have a boy or a girl
6. Boy or girl brought up in surroundings peculiar to their own parents and family and culture giving shape to the minds of these persons who develop their own identity as boy or girl (Gender identity)or whatever else influenced by many factors over and above the ones stated above.
7. Psyche: How the person forms his/her identity (gender identity) and how he/she behaves growing up as given in #6 above
So we can see the gender identity is influenced by Nature (Biological anatomy and physiology depending on how it is functioning) as well as "nurture" (social learning+ other factors of the culture and family)
As we can see there are so many levels where something may go "wrong" or away from the norm and result in "disturbance" of one kind or the other. Genes carry info like some inherited disease and Chromosomes have their own problems resulting in all kinds of disorders etc. Then during development things can change in gonads or sex organs. So there are multitudes of abnormalities some minimal some big and some in between
So the first thing in a child showing signs of "disturbance' we need to see if there is something the matter in these levels and have tests performed to see if some change is causing homosexuality for instance. Of course, there will be somewhere nothing is found abnormal and we end up saying this psychological. if psychological is not considered abnormal then we say all is normal but the person is so inclined from cultural or family influences
I am saying all this because if we dont pay attention to all this detail some 'diseases will go undiagnosed under the label of LGBT which by itself has no meaning except socially speaking and that all has now happened that socially it is all acceptable which is not bad
Please visit my Urdu blog at خیالات و احساسات
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