“Up until age 5, I was a child. No real concept of gender.
At 6, I went to school, and noticed something was wrong. I was dressed as a boy, I looked like a boy, but I didn’t think like “other boys”. I still liked toy guns, and Meccano rather than dolls, but I was different.
At 7, I knew I wasn’t a boy, but didn’t know what I was. I thought boys were puerile, and girls too silly and sissy. A classic Tomboy in retrospect.
At 8, I got to play hopscotch with other girls, and I felt at home. They thought like I did, they cried like I did. I still didn’t see myself as more than an honourary girl though. Even if my favourite toy car was Lady Penelope’s pink Rolls-Royce.
At 9, more by a process of elimination than anything else, I realised I was female. Boys could just as well have been an alien species. Girls were just like me, in feelings and values.
At 10, I was in a boys boarding school then, and I was able to make up boardgames of astounding complexity when it rained. I had my own secret garden in the nearby woods, with flowerbeds I’d planted. I could sit and read amidst the flowers, and was terribly happy. It was then I picked the name Zoe, and planned what I was going to do with my life. I wanted children, a husband, the white picket fence etc, but also to be a Rocket Scientist and to travel the world, things that Wives and Mothers Just Did Not Do in the 60’s.
Even though it had been obvious since age 7 that I’d never be “svelte” or “petite”, that I’d be the girl “with the wonderful personality”. I didn’t cry about that – much. And not where anyone could see me. I was more worried about the practical problems I’d be having when I started having a female puberty. And vaguely concerned that boys didn’t interest me at all. I was no naive I thought that was part of the package of being a girl. Was I a defective one?
It came as a terrible shock when I learnt that boys and girls are born looking different, and that my body was boy.
I didn’t take it well.
Basically, I failed my SAN roll, and convinced myself I had to be a boy, no matter how I felt inside. That meant forgetting a lot, suppressing memories, but it was either acquire a minor psychosis, or sink into despair, depression, and death.
A part of me still knew, but that part was in a box in a safe in the hold of a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean on a planet circling a distant star.
I tried to be the best Man any woman could be. I did that for 47 years. It helped to be Asexual, mildly lesbian if anything. Sex was for having children, a form of cuddling and pleasing someone you loved, albeit a bit tiring after the first hour. Not something instinctive or natural.”

While it would be a mistake to universalise what is objectively a very anomalous situation, this does provide powerful evidence that Diamond’s theory is correct in at least some circumstances.
I tried to make myself into the kind of man I should have married, in the normal course of events. There’s a limit to neuroplasticity though, and 47 years wasn’t enough to make any detectable difference whatsoever.
Now I’m not the most feminine of females, my neuro-anatomy atypical of either male or female in many ways, but I’m me. No matter how screwed up my biology is from 3BHDD (which can throw the whole endocrine system into Chaos), I fit rather neatly into the socially-constructed box marked “Geek Girl Frumpy Female Academic”, without having to compromise myself. I’m home at last.
Really interested in how I got here though. The Geekdom is stronger even than gender identity.

Philosophically, I am an essentialist — not a social constructionist: I believe that gender identity and sexual orientation are grounded in biological reality. The body tells us who we are, and we cannot “construct” — assemble or disassemble — a different reality in which gender and sexual identity are out of synchrony with biology.
The belief that humanity is designed for heterosexuality has been shaped by age-old religious and cultural forces, which must be respected as a welcome aspect of intellectual diversity. …
Natural-law philosophy says this view derives from mankind’s collective, intuitive knowledge; a sort of natural, instinctive conscience.

Forgive me if I’m just stupid or something but if Nicolosi is not a social constructionist; then what’s up with those last two paragraphs? The two wherein he says religion and cultural forces – ie. social forces – have to be given consideration. Then there is the ‘natural-law philosophy‘ which is exactly a social construct as he defines it. It becomes the pseudo-instinctual, totalitarian viewpoint of 97% of humanity.
None of what Nicolosi mentions in the two final paragraphs is real science. It does not in any way support that he is an essentialist. What he says in the first paragraph is. But it is rather simplistic science; and Nicolosi allows his social presuppositions to rule his “science.” Thus he fails to truly study the natural world beyond them.
Eh….

[–]GorillaJ 0 points 1 day ago
Absolutely. What benefit is there to risking myself? If I wanted to hurt someone, there are plenty of smarter ways to do it. For a transsexual who tricked me? Easiest way would probably be finding some brutish transphobes and alerting them. If I stayed on good terms with the transperson in question, I could probably get them to come out on a date with me to wherever.

Yes, otherwise sane people can calmly and openly discuss a plan for pre-meditated murder of someone like myself, see nothing wrong with it, and expect to get a large degree of support from those of like mind. They tend not to make fine distinctions between Intersexed, Transsexed or Transgender women, and view anyone in the above categories who doesn’t appear different from the norm as engaging in deception.

Sexual orientation is, if anything, more strongly evidenced in neurological anatomy.

Zoe, are you saying that from everything you’ve read, which appears to considerable, that sexual orientation is more biology/physiology than environmental, much like intelligence? I think from my readings that intelligence can be stimulated, enhanced, increased somewhat from environmental factors, but the foundational intelligence of an individual is present at birth. The ability to process the stimuli presented from the environment is part of the biology of the individual.
Is sexual orientation a foundational construct at birth within the given neurological anatomy, and if so, how much does external stimuli (positive or negative) alter that? Is homosexuality a neurological miscue in development, or rather a naturally occurring event, though less common in presentation?

“We all want to be an object of desire- the kind of woman that men talk about, dream about and long to be with. We all want to be chased and admired by men and to be appreciated, respected and admired for our existence, appearance, personality and accomplishments. “

Obvious in retrospect, not at the time.
Now, in a marriage with someone I love, with a boy nearly ten to bring up…. OK, I have a sexual orientation now. Pretty strongly too. But celibacy is really the only option I have, I value other things more highly – and am also still pretty scared, I think.