I wrote this a short time in response to
KathleenM1's excellent diary about her fortitude in arguing for a gay gene at a Dobsen controlled website called
TrueU. If you haven't yet read it, I would encourage you to do so to respect and admire that fortitude in the face of cluelessness and deceit.
Vicariously, it's one of the follow-ups to one of the first diaries I did here at DKOs: Shame and Secrecy: Genital Mutilation in the US. While not related to what I had planned to do but got distracted from actually finishing (long story---but I haven't forgotten!), it's still pertinent. I've gotten horribly dragged down with the sex and gender part I promised because, well...just because.
The premise of KathleenM1's diary was about the genetic component of queerness. This is the original response to her diary; I've drawn it out some here.
In my response, I prefer to use queer rather than gay, lesbian, trans, bi, etc, etc. etc. The acronyms we give ourselves in the community seem bit absurd and ghettoizing to me. If you ask someone who thinks we should be locked away, we are all gay or queer and the labels we adopt don't mean much to their politics despite the pedestal we hoist ourselves upon with a letter. By using "queer" myself, I realize that it makes some people uncomfortable but it's what I am most comfortable with and aids in not exluding any neighborhoods in the ghetto. FWIW, I consider myself a queer person by birth.
I am wary of an absolute genetic link for being queer. I used to be convinced, but no longer am. It's the fallout of the potential of such a discovery that scares me away from it mostly; that literally scares me to death. Call me a wimp if you will, but I look at as self-preservation.
The other factor is what I have learned as an outfront intersex activist and knowing how those with intersex have been treated since the 1950s is a big fucking warning flag to what parents will do.
I'm by no means a scientist, nor a geneticist; I'm simply someone affected by intersex because of the way I was born and that turned me into a front line activist on the issue. I stay abreast on the latest research out there both in the medical area and psychological area. I restrict my activism to social issues around it for the most part.
The vast majority of intersex conditions have a genetic component. Often forgotten or unrealized in the genetic factor are the hormonal pathways of both the fetus and the woman need to have certain components for the gene to be activated. This is in addition to the father carrying the same exact gene mutation. Even if both parents carry the gene, there is only a one in four chance of the gene being activated in the precise ways necessary to cause the intersex condition. Even then, the intersex condition can vary despite it being the same gene. It's a bit more complicated than this, but it would take a text book or three or four to get into the absolute details.
By hormonal pathways, I'm talking about how a fetus and later as a child synthesizes the hormones, usually sex related hormones such as estrogens and testosterones (androgens) and all their different cousins each of us carries. The mother's own pathways have a role here too.
If you've had a "normal" child, consider yourselves lucky the precise hormonal timing and levels worked as they should. There's so much that can go wrong.
Is mom on some type of hormone? Did she take birth control long after she got pregnant?
Is the father on some type of hormonal cream?
Both of these examples can play a role outside of the genetics I am not going to get into here. However, both can affect sexual development and sexual orientation due to the way they affect the hormonal balance in the fetus or child.
In my body I produce an extraordinarily large amount of testosterones (androgens) but my hormonal pathways convert it into estrogens. I was only able to find this out as a result of an in-depth genetic test I had done as part of a study. As a result of the way my pathways function, I appear very female for the most part. My base-line T level is greater than most unaffected males. Yet, because I have a uterus and ovaries, I menstruate and could carry children if I desired, which I don't. The only effect those pathways had on me as a fetus was to virilize my body in my mother's womb. She oozed enough hormones into me during my gestation to cause me to born virilized enough to confound the doctors when they tried to pronounce my sex. It took a few days, but I was lucky...some woman are raised male and the results are often very sad.
Before my mom died, we used to joke about how I was the "oh, shit" baby of the family. Those were the words of the obstetrician and they stayed with her throughout her life; I am grateful she felt me worthy enough of knowing that detail as an adult. It was only after I confronted her with it after obtaining my childhood medical records that I learned it and was simply confirming what I read.
When I was born in the mid-1960's with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), current research pointed to nuture as being key in a child's life. My parents were told by my doctors that if they dressed me all frilly and pretty, I would grow up to find myself a loving husband who would somehow accept my queer body---my little tits, my small hips unadequate to carry a child, the scar tissue where my clitoris was when I was born but before the surgeons unceremoniously chopped it, and my John Wayne walk. Oh, they tried and tried. I have to give a hand to my mom for trying but research at the time pointed to genes and I was XX and all girl. But I wasn't really...I kind of was, but deep down, I knew I was different. I knew I was a girl, but I didn't know that word...lesbian, homosexual, queer. I only knew that my childhood girlfriends turned me on when we played. I hated dolls and was thrilled with HotWheels. I am shitty housekeeper, but can change a headlight in my car in a minute flat.
Far higher numbers of those with the type of intersex condition I have compared to the unaffected population are lesbian or bi. It's somewhere in the 45-50% range based upon recent research. Anecdotally, the numbers are probably higher based upon personal experience. But that research comes with a caveat...while all woman with CAH as I do have "the gene", we all have different degrees of it. That is, our endocrine pathways are slightly different. Other woman with it may not produce as much T as I do, and yet others produce more and end up with horrible body hair because their body doesn't convert it to estrogen and thus, sexual orientation or the degree of queerness can vary greatly. It all has to do with the pathway and how it synthesizes the stuff.
Additionally, a higher number of women with CAH than without it will transition to male.
Ironically, many woman with one degree of it are heterosexual in orientation but transition at a higher rate than the other variations.
If it was purely genetic, then all woman with the same CAH gene as I would be lesbian, but we aren't.
Some others have another type of intersex condition called AIS which stands for Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. People with AIS have a basis genotype of XY. Like CAH, there are varying degrees of AIS ranging from complete AIS (CAIS) to partial (PAIS) over a range of 7 grades. All lack functioning ovaries and a uterus. They may have non-fuctioning fully formed testes or they may have only streak tissue. They produce testosterone normally but their endocrine pathways for it are shut off and they don't respond to it. In puberty, they are given estrogens to maintain a healthy bone density index and further feminize, such as growing breasts.
Most women with CAIS are heterosexual despite being XY. Few will ever transition to male.
Those that respond to different degrees of the androgens on the partial (PAIS) end of the spectrum often will transition and are all over the map on the sexual orientation scale. Depending on the virilization evident at birth, they may be initially raised as female or male; it really depends on the attending physician and the parents.
And again, they have "the gene" but the results are completely unpredictable for many. Because of the range of results, it's damn near impossible to predict with any certainity who that child will be when they grow up.
One other common type of intersex is Klinefelters Syndrome. People with KS have an extra X gene or two or three. The most common is XXY, it can go as far as XXXXY. Virtually all are pronounced male at birth due to the presence of a penis and testicles. Just before and at the onset of puberty, they can produce viable semen but once all the hormones start to take hold including the extra estrogens, that is usually lost. Many men don't know they even have it until they try to reproduce and can't. It's one of the first things reproductive endos will test for.
Most people with XXY are heterosexual. But, higher numbers than the unaffected population are queer and way higher numbers are trans*. Many, many MTFs discover they Klinefelters in the process of transitioning. If XXY in itself was a marker for queerness, then it would seem logical all people affected would be in that catagory but it doesn't happen that way. Instead, the degree of severity and the hormonal effects seem to control it.
Each of these basic types of intersex are genetically based yet they affect individuals very differently. They tend to run in families...remember the one in four given from above? This doesn't include those whose mother's simply ooze an 'off' amount of hormones while pregnant due to drugs or idiopathically.
Even with twins having the same gene, you may have different results.
Confused yet? Don't worry...it's not a simple either/or equation.
Each of the genes that cause these types of intersex conditions (there are about 72 different types of IS; the three above are the most common and easiest to explain/understand) is detectable by CVS at about 13-16 weeks gestation. While I am firmly pro-choice, it pains me to think that a fetus would be aborted simply for not being "perfect enough". I know it happens--I see it on message boards frequented by families affected. Many parents, especially older ones, will spend large amounts of money in search of the perfect designer baby. If anything is wrong, then they think it is easier to give that fetus up and try again. I remember very clearly an online conversation with someone who justified the avoidance of a baby 'like me' through IVF alone. She actually advocated to someone else in the conversation to choose a boy through IVF and be done with it (boys with CAH are not intersex). I was horrified as you can imagine---this was a woman who was able to bear children yet had questions about the odds of her baby being intersex (1:4)
Even worse, mothers will often subject their child to massive amounts of hormones to counteract the affect her own body does in an effort to keep the child with CAH from virilizing in the womb. The long-term effects of these hormones are unknown...children exposed to them in-utero are only now reaching adulthood. Based upon questions put to me on these message boards, many parents hope these hormones will also keep their child from being queer. It's pretty horrifying to think that someone would abort or chemically alter a child because they carry "the gene" in an effort to save them from homosexuality or from being trans. They see being queer as so horrible they are willing to take measures to prevent it even if it means abortion or subjecting the fetus to the unknown effects of extra-strength hormones like dexamethasone.
It happens, and it's happening today because some people don't want no queer baby.\
If a gay or gender gene is discovered (Vilain seems to be making the most headway here, fwiw) I fear it will lead to eugenics and the eventual elimination of queerness. Others have tried in the past to find the perfect human being; why do we mimick them in a search for freedom that will likely end up bad?
If you are interested in reading what other people with intersex are like (I don't claim to be like everyone else), you can check out the website of the intersex peer support organization I founded. You'll find we don't agree on much beyond the way we are treated by society and the medical community)