What makes you feel male or female? Lesbian, gay, binary, or transgender? Understand the brain differences between women and men, as well as the divergent paths that can be taken on the not-really-binary road to sex and gender identification.Gender identity and sexual orientation are hardwired in your brain. And you may be surprised to find that no one's brain is full-on female or full-on male. It's not an either-or coin toss. Certain brain structures develop on a female – male continuum and account for the LGBTQ population.
With new understanding of the genetics of sex chromosomes, and new discoveries of brain development in the womb, it has become clear that maleness and femaleness are not two separate sides of a single coin. On a spectrum of brain differentiation, full-on female and full-on male are opposite ends that almost no one ever reaches.
Influences of genetics, fetal hormones, drugs, chemicals, and environmental toxins create routes to defining sex and gender that are much more complex than the binary path that we've been taught. Internal sex organs, external sexual anatomy, and sexually-differentiated brain structures all are susceptible to these influences at different times during development of the fetus, and therefore may be inconsistent with one another, or internally inconsistent or ambiguous. Inconsistencies between differentiated brain structures and sexual anatomy can cause the feeling of being the right gender in the wrong body.
Gender identity and sexual orientation are set in the biology of specific brain structures during fetal development. Neither is a choice.
Explore the most recent research findings on genetics and male – female brain differences. Pick up your copy of Not A Choice!
