Gender Identity Disorder (AQA A Level Psychology)

Biological explanations of gender dysphoria

• The DSM-5 –TR (2022) defines gender dysphoria as “clinically significant distress or impairment related to gender incongruence, which may include desire to change primary and/or secondary sex characteristics”

• In simpler language, it describes the feelings of distress experienced when a person’s assigned gender does not match the gender to which they feel they belong 

• Gender dysphoria is an example of atypical gender development that is described as a gender identity disorder (however, it is important to note that not all transgender people experience gender dysphoria)

• Biological explanations of gender dysphoria focus on genetics, hormones and brain differences

• Genetic explanation:

  • Inherited gene variants, such as a longer than usual androgenreceptor gene have been detected in gene-profiling studies, resulting in biological males being unresponsive to testosterone and therefore having an absence of male features 

• Hormonal explanation:

  • A disorder in the mother’s hormonal system, maternal stress, medication or illness during pregnancy may interfere with hormonal levels and may expose a female foetus to an excess of testosterone or a male foetus to a dearth of testosterone which results in babies with some of the physical features of the opposite sex

• Explanation from brain differences:

  • The sexually-dimorphic nucleus region in the hypothalamus is 2.5 times larger in males than in females and post-mortems conducted on the brains of male-to-female transgender individuals have found this region to be smaller and more typical of a female brain

Biological explanations of gender dysphoria are often genetic.

Social explanations of gender dysphoria

• Social explanations of gender dysphoria explain it as a result of learned behaviour, with children gaining positive reinforcement from parents and/or peers for exhibiting behaviour usually associated with the opposite gender

• Thus gender dysphoria is explained as the result of socialisation; just as children are socialised into their usual gender roles, so they may be socialised into opposite gender roles 

• This could be the result of parents desiring a girl but instead having a baby boy and positively reinforcing feminine behaviours either consciously or unconsciously.

Gender dysphoria can be confusing

Biological research which investigates gender identity disorder

• Hare et al (2009) investigated genetic variations in the brains of 112 male-to-female transgender individuals and discovered that those with gender dysphoria had androgen receptors that were insensitive and/or unresponsive 

• Diamond (2013) combined a survey of transgender twins with a review of studies on transgender twins and found that concordance rates for gender dysphoria among identical male and identical female twin pairs were 33.3% and 22.8% respectively, supporting the theory of a genetic component to gender dysphoria

Social psychological research which investigates gender identity disorder

• Littman (2019) conducted interviews with parents of adolescents with gender dysphoria and found that parents felt that this was a case of positive reinforcement from peers leading to these young people developing the disorder

Evaluation of the biological and social explanations of gender dysphoria

Strengths

• Biological research can lead to successful hormone treatment for gender dysphoria

• Research suggests that social explanations for gender dysphoria have to be accepted when there are no physiological brain differences to be found between those with gender dysphoria and those who do not experience it

Limitations

• There is a lack of empirical evidence for a social explanation - even Littman’s research (above) had to be withdrawn and revised substantially to show that this was just parental opinion

• Biological explanations are subject to bidirectional ambiguity as it may be that brain changes happen after gender dysphoria is present and could be a result of living as the opposite gender.

Link to Issues and Debates:

Both explanations can be seen to be reductionist as the explanations they give rely solely on either biological or social-psychological causes for gender identity disorder and over-simplify the complexity of gender. They are also determinist and. Similarly, with social-psychological explanations, the child could have been secretly behaving as their experienced (preferred) gender long before doing it publicly and gaining reinforcement for the behaviour.A holistic approach would be to acknowledge that there may be a hormonal predisposition to preferring the opposite gender identity that is reinforced socially through parental or peer approval, and to realise that not everyone experiences gender dysphoria to the same extent or for the same reasons.