CAIS and Nature vs Nurture

[SarahNicole]

So I just looked up some information about Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. The site I read (which is not academic or authoritative, but at face value seems very good) states that most (but obviously not all) XY-born people who have the syndrome are happy to identify as female even though they find out that they're genetically male at puberty. This seems to lean more toward gender being "learned" in the nature/nurture fight.

We can obviously conclude that gender is not 100% learned because of the case of one man whos name I forget (Was raised as female after his penis got destroyed at a very young age, yet stubbornly insisted he was male all throughout childhood)... but if this is true, then gender can definitely be learned as well, in some cases.

Could it be said then that for most people, their true gender is actually somewhat neutral, and can lean either way with proper rearing, while some are hard-coded to be distinctly male or female?

Here is the site I read.
http://www.secondtype.info/ais.htm

[Lyn Aven]

Sounds reasonable to me.

[podunktown]

David Reimer is the insistent male you're talking about. Really interesting story, but I don't think he's the perfect case study for nature vs. nurture. He was raised as female as part of an experiment by a crooked sexologist, who made David and his twin brother act out sex scenes as part of their therapy sessions. Also, David's testicles were only removed when he was 22 months old so he was still exposed to baby boy levels of androgens up until then.

One of my profs showed us this article about a woman with CAIS. Apparently doctors were reluctant (maybe they still are) to tell these patients that they're XY because the news could be devastating on a personal level. It must be heavy for these women, although they go on with their lives as females. I believe that, although the news is not usually enough to change the person's gender identity, it is significantly disconcerting. I guess that would mean that knowledge of one's nature plays a role.

http://www.thestar.com/mobile/NEWS/article/802339

[mpshiel]

CAIS women are not genetically male, they are XY females.

CAIS females, unlike PAIS female, have pretty much zero androgyn in the body - which means they tend to look tall and like a model and be very girly. My own studies amoung CAIS females found that orientation is consistant with that of the general population (6-9% lesbian, 3-5% bisexual, the rest heterosexual) and the same for gender identity, it is just that if gender identity transitions occur in 1 in 50,000 - getting 50,000 CAIS women is a very hard marker to group. So there isn't enough of a percentage to make a scientific statement one way or another.

The case of David Reimer however showed that the Canadian idea that nurture, or 'learned' gender, which sadly still is the prodominant idea amoung most of the older specialists is conclusively incorrect. You can't effectively change gender just by changing clothing and enforcing mannerisms by negative reinforcement.

There was a program to do this started by Hitler to try to turn gays into straight individuals and effeminiate or trans males into soldier type males - it was a complete failure.

So the south African government did the exact same thing, using electro-shock and vomiting inducing negative reinforcement - but it didn't change behavoir or orientation. The South Africian government (military branch) then gave the males involuntary sex changes to females to try and eliminate gay behavoir. Which didn't make the individuals female, it made them gay men who had an involuntary sex change.

David Reimer, due to the isolation and trauma of his earlier life committed suicide.

Currently in the EU there is a school for children who are acting in gendered ways different than the biologically assigned gender - and giving them the freedom to be who they are, including preparing for surgery those who are clearly female/male in opposition to the assigned gender of birth. The program currently has a 100% success rate - it is a phenominal program for trans kids.

In the US, the vast majority of programs are based on changing behavoir, using negative reinforcement techniques more often used to control children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. What ends up happening are five year olds in a room without any toys, with a box of crayons with all the bright colours removed forbidden to draw rainbows, horses, sparkles, princesses, suns, or anything smiling, and flowers, and who try to stab themselves if they see the colour pink because they know they want to play with the girls playing over there and don't want the punishment and their parents to hate them.

These programs have a success rate below 15% (and I would question even those numbers).

CAIS women are just as much women as women with XXX or XXXX or X/O or XY genes (or XX, too). We are all, if we look at a chromosome studies, full of differences, because we are HUMAN and not robot (we are not supposed to be all the same). instead of advanced intuitive thinking or dyslexia or ASD or any of the variety which has made up the population (and great artists and thinkers of the past and present), that variation involves the two 'sex' chromosomes so that they are in a minority compared to the rest of the population. Yes, they are chromosome different, but so is everyone.