What makes a girl?

My last posting spoke about history and possibilities about how people in the LGBT world evolved with a focus on the brain.  My research into that discussion made me wonder what makes a girl.

A few weeks ago I heard someone make a statement about LGBT community that,

"We are all experts about LGBT as it relates to our own journey but fail to realize that every person is different."

As my inner self and outer portrayal have clashed I've investigated the subject to better understand tmy own conflict.  There are a few constants but it all comes back to one main question -- 

"What makes a girl, a girl?"

Keeping in mind that my experience is different than everyone else I've noticed some things from my life common for many people that fall within the LGBT community.

• Feminine Mannerisms
• Ran like a girl
• Told I acted like a girl mentally and emotionally
• Liked to danced like a girl
• Inescapable desire to present as a woman
• Clothing
• Makeup
• Atypical dating habits
• Attraction to women started later than my friends and started when testosterone began to make noticeable changes to my body
• Indifference to sex
• Difficulty staying with a partner
• Desire to date ended entirely as testosterone levels started to decrease in my body
• Moody with bouts of depression
• Good analytical skills but surges of creativity 
• Struggles in school early that disappeared once I hit age 11-12
• High pitched voice
• A knowledge from an early age that I was different than other guys
• Higher right brain focus (creative) than left brain (logical)
• A learned habit of hiding anything feminine from everyone for fear of being teased

Despite the fact that this list might give the reader the impression that I sashay into rooms like the biggest queen in San Francisco, most people in my life would be stunned to know the above due to the last point.  I've gotten quite good at hiding feminine tendencies in my life.

As I said in the last article, for most people being a girl is as simple as doing a genetic test.  XY = male & XX = female. I've never had a genetic test but I'm fairly certain it would come back as a normal XY male though it wouldn't surprise me if a testosterone test came back showing me as low.  None of that explains my actions or feelings.

I've hit on this in earlier posts but it bears repeating.  Hormone levels in most kids are similar except that boy fetuses have a testosterone surge between the sixth and the twenty sixth week after conception.  Additionally, estrogen and testosterone rise a few months after birth then levels off after six months.  After the surge, boys and girls hormones are essentially the same until puberty.

At age 3, even with similar hormones, boys tend towards trucks and girls tend towards dolls.  I know my own experience is similar as I never had an impulse to play with Barbie dolls or an Easy Bake Ovens.  I did however like to tell long engaged stories with my toys (trucks and sporting equipment) and in time I became a leader among my friends as I included them in my play.

This type of creative/interpersonal behavior is much more prevalent in woman than men, especially at an early age.  My games of baseball weren't about the basics of hitting the ball and scoring runs, we actually became the players and I kept score that I would summarize every night to better tell the tale the next morning.

One thing I couldn't change was my running style.  I must have been really young when I was told that I 'ran like a girl' as it has been with me from my earliest memory.  After spending half my life trying to change it, I gave up and focused on the fact that I was faster than most of them to avoid any teasing.

What does it mean to 'run like a girl'?

I haven't found any study that speaks to why boys and girls look different when playing sports.  One thing I do know is boys tend to play a lot of sports while throughout history girls have been discouraged from doing the same. 

I played a lot of baseball in my youth and at one point I could throw the ball from the outfield fence 300+ feet to home plate on about 2 hops.  My left hand would have been lucky to throw the ball 10 feet.  If I tried I'm sure someone would have said I threw like a girl  The primary reason I could throw the ball so far with my right hand was practice and strength. 

Go to any intro baseball team.  You will see dozens of kids throwing the ball back and forth 'like girls'.  Watch a college softball game and you will see women throwing the ball like 'men'.

I think part of the answer lays in experience and as girls were discouraged from playing sports, the expectations became that they could not do it (hence --- throwing like a girl).  While men are certainly stronger due to testosterone if you goto a sporting event between girls and boys before the age of 10 these days, you are certain to find girls playing just as well as any guy.

That doesn't mean there aren't feminine ways of doing things.  Just like I ran like a girl as I won races on the track in high school, there were many women that looked masculine doing the same thing for their schools.

So what does it mean to be feminine?

This is a trickier question.  Boys tend to have better logical thought processes and motor skills at an earlier age and girls tend to have better communicative skills.  Is there any part of the brain that encourages girls to play with Barbie dolls, wear pretty dresses, and cross their legs when they sit?

It's hard to know.  As I've stated earlier - hormones in boys and girls are essentially the same after six months so any differences have to be coming from their brains or from an external source.  It comes back to the whole nature or nurture argument.

Many in the XX = Female and XY = Male crowd will point to upbringing as the only cause for LGBT feelings.  Yet study after study has shown that boys and girls really do prefer toys suited to their gender.  A good example is girls born with CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) where male hormones are present in the womb and even after correcting the issue after birth many of them develop characteristics like heightened aggression and mental focus similar to boys their age.  As the only difference between girls with CAH and girls without CAH is male hormones present during pregnancy then it appears that these hormones can cause the brain to develop in a slightly different manner.

On the other hand, while hormones seem to be the cause for the differences in the male and female brain, then why do men with no hormonal issues at birth become transgender?  The truth is we don't know.  It could be the mother blocking androgens at a crucial part of the pregnancy or it could be a combination of hormones with a thousand other genetic factors.  We don't know.

One thing we know for sure is millions of men and women throughout history and on every continent have felt the pull of the other gender far beyond a desire for experimentation.  That doesn't happen organically without something else causing it to happen.

The cause for gender identification issues could be due to a variety of reasons though I am worried that some day they may find a genetic marker for everyone in the LGBT community.  While I like the idea being able to test the issue would be ... what's next? 

The issues would arise when the tests don't match a child's wishes.  It would be helpful for those that develop traits early but I know I wouldn't have been able to accept the idea as living life as a girl until much later in life. 

Also, how would the church react?  As god made us with these abnormal genes, does it allow us to change ourselves to better match god's plan?  Or is it more likely that at some point in the future that the 'abnormals' would be rounded up similar to the Holocaust so humans don't have to deal with our kind any more.  I'm betting on the latter.