Friday, April 20, 2012

Fluid Transsexuals?

As we continue to beat one another up internally and as a community for what we are,  yet another fascinating study is coming to light which proves once again much of our anguish is something we had no control over.
This look at being a man in the morning and a woman at night comes from the "Scientific American" site:

"A graduate student of famed neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran has found a group of men and women who report that their sexual identity can switch involuntarily to that of the opposite sex and back again. The transgender metamorphosis, these people assert, can occur several times a day and at inopportune moments. It is also accompanied by the sensation of phantom breasts or genitalia of the non-biological sex.
The research grows out of Ramachandran’s long-standing fascination with the study of body image and how it contributes to a basic sense of the self, work that has included investigations into the phantom limbs of amputees.
The preliminary study by Laura Case, Ramachandran’s student, raises the prospect of a new category of transgenderism. “Alternating gender incongruity (AGI),” the neuropsychiatric term the researchers have tentatively proposed, describes the involuntary change of gender identity, along with perceived phantom sex characteristics, a tendency toward ambidexterity and bipolar disorder, all signs that suggest a biological basis for AGI. (A related term, bigender, defined as blending or alternating gender states, precedes AGI.)"

Of course there is much more to this study. Just go to the "Scientific American" link above to read more. 

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