Previously, a discussion of the controversy over J. Michael Bailey's book on transgenders, "The Man Who Would be Queen," focused on problems finding the line between science and opinion in research on human biology. It is also interesting to speculate where the feelings come from that spur the decision to become transgendered (even for those of us who are not specialists in this area and have no scientific credibility backing up our positions).

As social animals, humans learn early on the rules to navigate society. Proper understanding and navigation of social norms is essential for humans to live satisfying lives, and in general, to reproduce. Rules governing gender roles, although they may vary from culture to culture, are a large subset of these.

It is clear to anyone watching children develop and begin to navigate the social waters that gender roles are a big area of focus for them. For instance, through observation, small children build a list of rules for identifying a male versus a female, and are very good at this with adults at a young age (<2). The genders of children themselves are much harder to identify, of course, because they lack secondary sex characteristics until puberty, so children and adults use other cues such as hairstyle and clothing to decide whether a child is a girl or a boy. When the signals are mixed, it seems to faze children more. If a girl has short hair and is not wearing girly clothes, another toddler may ask over and over "it's a she?" each time the girl is referred to as one.

A child also understands early in development that he or she is either a boy or girl (based on constant references by family and friends), and tailors his or her behavior to the correct gender, which shows that he or she understands the rules governing gender roles. All the sex-associated behavioral traits that parents insist must be inborn, may not be at all (the scientific jury is still out on most of these). Humans are designed to figure out this crucial part of living in a society at as early an age as possible, so whether or not they are, sex-associated traits can seem to be "genetic."

But what of the children who know they are a certain sex, but are not comfortable mimicking the behavior they see associated with that sex? (Why this happens in genetically unambiguous males and females is not always known and for another discussion.) They may feel caught in a trap. A boy (such as someone that I do currently know) who loves pink and frilly things either learns early on to suppress his own feelings, or is forced to suppress them by his family -- perhaps because they fear it means he is gay. If one stands back for a moment, the condemnation of a preference for a color by one sex that has been arbitrarily designated as being owned by the other sex is ludicrous, but of course occurs. If that boy is continually given the idea that there is something wrong with him because of his aesthetic preferences, then how is he going to feel about himself as he grows up? Society has already decided, at age 4, that there is something wrong with him, so it is likely he will believe it. This could play out any number of ways as the boy grows up, but one way that seems possible is that the boy will decide he really is supposed to be a woman, because he likes things that society tells him only women are allowed to like.

Society forces values and behaviors on us that we either accept, and become assimilated, or reject, and become an outcast or fringe member. Why do some men want to become women? Bailey says it is either because they are gay, and want to attract men, or because they find the thought of themselves as a female sexual object erotic. This either-or is what many transgenders have objected to, because surely people are more complex than the pigeonholers would have. What if a third (of likely several more) reason is that male-to-female transsexuals are just men who want to be able to wear dresses and enjoy pink, which society says they cannot do as men ("cross-dressing" being generally a fringe activity)?

I did find one study which is interesting in light of this theory (Winter S , Udomsak N (2002) Male, Female and Transgender : Stereotypes and Self in Thailand. Int. J. Transgenderism 6,1, http://www.symposion.com/ijt/ijtvo06no01_04.htm). The authors concluded with the following summary:

Participants overall expressed gender-trait stereotypes very similar to those of non-transgenders (both in their own country and internationally), notwithstanding that differences were found on a small number of traits.

Apart from a few traits, participants' actual self-concepts tended (in terms of their own gender-trait stereotypes) to be stereotypically female. Their ideal self-concepts were far less so, with several stereotypically male traits being frequently endorsed, and female traits being rejected.

As a corollary, the traits that participants wished to acquire tended to be broad-ranging, while those that they wished to lose were female-stereotyped.

The "ideal self-concept" and the "actual self-concepts" were not congruent. One might interpret this to mean that in an ideal world, we are all allowed to express our mix of stereotypically "male" and "female" traits, but in fact society has told these male-to-female transgenders that what they have are all the stereotypical "female" traits; therefore, they must be females trapped in male bodies. Why did they wish to lose "female" traits? My guess is that individuals such as these who cannot be neatly pigeonholed into their society's image of one gender or another are demonstrating it.

There are other individuals who are especially harmed by our either-or mentality of men and women. These are people with ambiguous genitalia, often due to recessive mutations. Some of these have an extra chromosome, such as people appearing to be males with an XXY genotype. (In humans, sex-determining chromosomes are labeled X and Y; females have two X chromosomes, and males have one X and one Y. Other species have different sex determination systems.) Others just don't produce enough of certain hormones when genitalia are developing. The latter is the subject of Jeffrey Eugenides's Pulitzer prize-winning novel "Middlesex," a story told from the point of view of a genetic male who is raised as a female for the first 14 years of his life. Behind the engrossing plot and the witty writing is a commentary on what gender really means, and how most of us have a very narrow view of what behavioral and appearance traits are acceptable in our society - and probably most societies.

This narrow view may make some biological sense, because really everything is about reproduction, and in a sexual species that means getting together with the right person in order to be able to reproduce, and in a social species that means learning the rules that tell you how to identify the sex of others, behave in a way that will make you attractive to members of the opposite sex. But as an intelligent and self-aware species it would be nice if we could transcend some biological imperatives to acknowledge the natural variation in gender identidy that does indeed occur (for whatever reason), and accept that full variation as part of the entire human experience.

Labels: gender, humans, sex, sociality

The Belostomatidae is a family of giant water bugs (Order Hemiptera) that has been fairly extensively studied because of the various species' unusual reproductive systems. In short, this is one of the few groups of animals that exhibit paternal care of offspring.


Probably the most well known animals with paternal care is the sea horse, who carries its mate's eggs in a brood pouch until they hatch. Belostomatids are similar because the male also takes care of the eggs, although he does it in two different ways between the two subfamilies, Lethocerinae and Belostomatinae. Above is a giant water bug in the genus Lethocerus. They are sit-and-wait aquatic predators, hanging head down on sticks or reeds underwater. An appendage extending from their abdomens remains above water and allows them to breathe. They are quite large, and much of their prey consists of tadpoles and small fish.


They have a somewhat painful bite, because they have a sharp beak with which they inject a neurotoxin which helps them control their prey. However, if one holds them just behind the head as shown it is safe to pick them up. (I was holding this particular specimen (from Costa Rica) that another student and I were studying; we were doing measurements to look for morphometric differences between males and females, and I had to do all the measuring because he was too afraid to pick one up.)

The Lethocerines are thought to be the more ancestral lineage in the family, based partly on the way they brood their young. Females lay eggs along the top of a stem sticking out of the water, but the eggs will dry out and die without care. The male stays as a sentry on that stem, periodically carrying water up to moisten the eggs and oxygenate them.


The Belostomatines are considered more derived evolutionarily, because the brooding behavior seems to be more efficient. Females lay their eggs directly on the back of the male, who must swim around with them until they hatch to keep them properly oxygenated. The picture at left shows a male with eggs.

Scientists like to study "reverse mating-system" species such as these because it gives us clues about what governs decision-making in animals. In the case of mating behavior, in nearly all animals known, females are choosy about their male mates, who often have elaborate physical features or behavior designed to attract the attention of females (or fight off other males). This is why in many species of birds, the males are more brightly colored than the females. The reverse mating-system species allow us to ask questions like, are females always the choosy ones, because they invest more resources in their gametes (eggs are a lot bigger and fewer than sperm), or is the parent with the largest investment overall the choosy one? Gamete size is an important measure of investment, but time and energy invested in a single mate are important too. In most animal species, a male has the sperm and the time to mate with many females, so he tends not to be choosy. A female not only has fewer gametes but usually invests more time in rearing the offspring than the male, so it's more important that she choose a mate with good qualities (for that species).

It has been found that in reverse mating-system species, the males actually tend to be the choosy ones - so there's nothing about being female per se that makes one choosy. Parental care of offspring is a huge investment, so when it switches to the males, they become the choosy ones. In the case of giant water bugs, a female may have enough eggs to mate with several males, and as soon as she lays them she can move on and find another mate. The male is the parent stuck taking care of the eggs for a couple weeks and thus loses opportunities for more matings in that time. Thus, accordingly, belostomatids and sea horses tend to have choosy males rather than females.

Labels: cool bugs, ecology, evolution, insects, sex