Atypical Gender Development Flashcards
What does gender dysphoria refer to?
an individual’s sense of feeling uncomfortable/inappropriate with their sex and the gender assigned to them
What can gender dsyphoria lead to?
gender reassignment surgery
What is Gender Identity Disorder (GID)?
A psychiatric classification for those who experience gender dysphoria but are not intersex individuals.
how do some view gender dysphoria?
A psychiatric probelm arising from childhood trauma or maladaptive upbringing
What did Coates produced a case study on?
a GID boy and proposed that his condition was a defensive reaction to his mother’s depression following an abortion
What did Coates suggest about his case study?
that the boy developed cross-gender fantasies as a means of resolving the anxiety he experienced as a result of his mother’s depression.
What did Stoller (75) claim?
to have found evidence from interviews with male GID sufferers that they had overly close mother-son relationships and thus developed an exaggeratedly strong identification with women and confused gender identity.
What did Hare examine?
the DNA of 112 male-to-female transsexuals and found that they were likely to have a longer version of the androgen receptor gene.
This may lead to reduced action of testosterone in the womb which may lead to a more ‘feminised’ brain
What has research been focused on?
neurological abnormalities in transsexual’s brains
What has been found in research on transsexual’s brains?
A location in the brain called the BSTc (located in the thalamus) is x2 as large in males as females and contains x2 the amount of neurons
What did studies by Zhou and Krujiver find?
that male-to-female transsexuals had the same number of neurons in the BSTc as normal females, and that female-to-male transsexuals had a similar number of neurons to normal men.
What did Cole study?
435 gender dysphoria sufferers
What did Cole find in their study?
found no greater incidence of psychiatric problems than in the general population. Thus, gender dysphoria seems generally unrelated to childhood trauma or dysfunctional families.
What did Zucker study?
115 boys with concerns about their gender identity
What did Zucker find?
Of the boys eventually diagnosed with GID 64% were also diagnosed with separation anxiety disorder
