My XY Chromosome

Someone interacting with me is acknowledging that I call myself a girl with “outie” plumbing but her point is that no matter what I say, my DNA says I’m male.

How I responded to her might be useful to some trans girls so I cleaned up my email and made this article. I’m not claiming to be the expert, just explaining how I understand things.

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I AM a girl with “outie” plumbing. It’s not just semantics. To elaborate:

My brain is what’s most fundamental as to who and what I am. For example it’s the main organ with which you’ve been interacting all this time. Focusing on you as an example: you have an amazing physique and you’re very pretty but it’s still your brain that makes you who you are. 

My brain structure is female based on the available body of evidence, the counselor input and the tests I’ve had done.  So we won’t really know 100% until I’m dead and someone does an autopsy but the best available conclusion is that I’m a genetic mutation born as a mix of parts: male sex organs and female brain.

As I understand things, the only two groups of organs that have sexed development in the fetus are the sex organs and the brain.  Everything else like liver, pinkie, nose etc. is gender neutral at birth. 

But then during puberty the sex organs typically make either testosterone or estrogen and that shapes the body from there on. By that time and beyond, my DNA was and is XY but the role of the sex chromosome in DNA is like the launching pad for a rocket.

Its job was to make the sex organs and the brain develop in the fetus as male. In my case, half of that worked and half didn’t so I was born a strange mixture. My DNA tried to make me male and it succeeded only in the less-fundamental aspect: my sex organ. It failed to make my brain structure develop as male. 

So my DNA it had its chance to make a difference as to my brain and now it’s too late to have any further effect because I’ve already developed my brain as structurally female, and I can’t undevelop or redevelop that. 

I have 23 chromosomes.  The sex chromosome (which is type “XY” for me) will never play a role again unless I were to impregnate someone. In all other cases, it’s in retirement doing nothing at all. It’s the other 22 chromosomes that are guiding my cellular development every day, as influenced by the prevailing hormones in effect.

To phrase it differently, if I have my DNA sequenced then it’ll always show as “XY” under the microscope but that’s not something anyone can see in daily life. unless looking through a microscope — and then even so, all they can see is something that’s the launching pad for influencing (or not) sex organs and brain structure in fetal development. Without detouring the development of these two organs into a male structure, they develop naturally as female in the fetus.

What you CAN see looking at me is the unpleasant-for-me shaping effects of what testosterone did during puberty for me, and the pleasant-for-me shaping effects of what estrogen is currently doing for me.

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Now that I have pondered this all, as to the phrase “my DNA says I’m male” … actually, my DNA says I’m a trans girl. It’s my DNA that caused the fetus (that would later become me) to develop male sex organs and a female brain structure. So in the same way as it’s an oversimplification to consider every body part of a person to have a consistent sex, it’s an oversimplification to consider DNA to be just male or just female.


One Gentleman’s Type of Christianity vs. the Concept of Trans Girls

On social media I was exchanging pleasant posts with someone who made it clear he’s a Christian. He seemed to get some value out of the conversation with me, and he mentioned that that was by far the longest conversation he’d ever had with a trans girl.

On the subject of me being trans, he said he respects me and my right to define how I feel. He also said that as a Christian, he disagrees with me.

I chose to respond.

This article is made up of my stream of posts on this subject (with some typos cleaned up, and with some terse & obscure wording cleaned up and abbreviations expanded) … indeed a monologue.  The gentleman hasn’t responded.

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As to “As a Christian I disagree with you” … the premise that I assume you disagree with is me saying I’m a trans girl. I’d like to gently separate those two issues

[1. As a Christian

2. I disagree with you]

… and address each one, to your intended benefit. If you learn something useful from it, great. That’s the ideal.

Re you as a Christian [emphasis on “Christian”] disagreeing with me saying “I’m a trans girl “… I can think of two ways of interpreting it:

  • a). “I’m a trans girl” is a valid claim someone can make but I, Tanya, personally cannot validly make that claim
  • b). “I’m a trans girl” is never a valid claim for anyone to make

As to option a), I assume we can dispense with that out of hand [since you hardly know me and have no basis for an informed opinion] and focus on option b) so I’d like to analyze it.

The cleanest definition I know as to a trans girl is that it’s someone born with predominantly “outie” plumbing “down there” to where she’s legally classified male at birth but her brain structure is predominantly female. [I’m choosing this definition over the oversimplified XY vs. XX chromosome premise since a trans girl friend of mine has Klinefelter syndrome and thus XXY chromosome. I use “predominantly” as to plumbing since some trans girls are born intersexed. I use “predominantly” as to brain structure since there is a small group of people whose brains are neither typically male nor typically cisfemale nor typically trans female.]

So Christianity weighing in on the subject would require medical insight in the context of a biological mutation. I used to do a lot of Bible-reading and went to a Christian church, and whatever my conclusions, they’re not that Christianity can claim insights into medical science.

Trans girls, as a subject, are not discussed in the Christian Bible at all. Neither the Old or New Testament mentions trans girls nor am I aware of the non-Biblical accounts noting Jesus’s opinion on trans girls.

Many things (handguns, canned food, continental drift) exist without being mentioned in the Bible or the teachings of Jesus. So the lack of mention doesn’t imply non-existence. So lack of mention of trans girls doesn’t imply non-existence of trans girls.

An essential part of what makes a trans girl a trans girl (or a gay person, gay) is brain wiring. If something is based on brain wiring, then the doctrine of any particular church can arbitrarily deny it and claim it’s nonexistent but that doesn’t make it so.

It’s sound logic that anyone claiming something to exist has the burden of proof , but (I mean this as nicely as possible) when it comes to discharging proper responsibility as to the burden of proof, as to the key premise of the Church, it falls fundamentally short. Faith rules.

As to the two things that make a trans girl a trans girl, one is being born with “outie-shaped” plumbing.

I can write my name just fine in the snow, and I have been able to do so ever since I can remember, so I assume that this half of the definition isn’t the problematic part.

The “female brain” wiring is presumably the issue. As such I find it useful to refer to studies that have found female and male brains to be structurally dissimilar, explaining why a guy cannot think like a girl or vice versa. Genders show a physical, brain-structure difference.

Not to oversimply a complex issue but nevertheless that’s why regardless of cultural issues, typically females strongly tend to have certain traits like empathy and being verbose and typically males strongly tend to be the opposite.

Some Dutch scientists were curious as to trans girls and, once the time came, performed autopsies & saw these trans girls had a brain structure that was a good match with non-trans females — and very different than a male brain structure. Hence the feminine behavior.

It’s hard to do this issue justice in a series of posts. I’m not enthused to start debating anyone on this point, I’m just giving information in case it’s useful to someone sincerely trying to learn more. On that premise my article titled “One Drop of Blood” might also be useful.

To put things in context more, here’s another article titled “Supercharged Femininity in Trans Girls” that might be useful.

One point I’d like to emphasize is that at some point the Christian Church saw a heliocentric solar system as incompatible with its doctrine, yet nowadays it’s a non-issue. Similarly currently many Christian churches consider trans girls as incompatible with their doctrine.

However, some Christians and several Christian churches have no issues with the basic concept of someone being a trans girl. Somehow I suspect that as general culture becomes more accepting then so will more & more Christian churches.

Meanwhile life has to go on for trans girls.