Throwaway to avoid getting doxxed
I know there are probably arguments against centering biology in the discussion about trans people (and if you want to make these arguments to me please do, I'm all ears), but I have found that many transphobes are brought to reflection when told that transgender feelings have a congenital basis, like homosexuality. I have been testing this. Again, I realize this might be a flawed or wrongheaded approach and I am open to criticism.
Anyway, my issue is that, while I have read some research, I do not have a strong enough grasp of the field as a whole to be forceful with this rhetoric. If I start posting studies, I might end up cherrypicking a position that is open to strong criticism.
I realize the research itself is unsettled and many questions remain, but I just want enough to inspire doubt. I want people to doubt that their current understanding of trans people is correct.
This study published in nature found correlations in the parietal lobe that might be associated with perception of one's own body, but I do not feel comfortable posting studies anywhere until I feel more confident that I know what I am talking about.
*got rid of the word "transsexual"
This is interesting, thanks. I'll need to review whether it's coherent or not.
It's basically just "studies on people with congenital hormone conditions like congenital adrenal hyperplasia have found that they are several times more likely than the general population to have a trans identity, while studies on XY individuals raised female due to missing or ambiguous genitalia find that they tend to still have male identities despite their socialization, so the evidence suggests that gender identity is innate in some manner instead of something learned or taught, even if the exact mechanism is unclear and there's no deterministic 'these conditions lead to such and such an identity 100% of the time'."
I also agree with your sentiment in the other comment, that this is in many regards the wrong question to ask because whether trans identities are innate or not shouldn't matter, although I do believe that the evidence is on the side of gender identity being real and innate regardless of whether it needs to be or not, especially since the only way to ever determine someone's gender identity concretely is for them to assert it for themselves. And I think that it'll probably stay that way because whatever "gender" is it's probably too convoluted and distributed a system in the brain to ever nail down a particular structure or configuration that's linked to it.