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Transgender concepts have been a prevalent issue. It has been seen on a celebrity level with Caitlyn Jenner but on smaller levels as well. Schools are struggling to make decisions of whether to make bathrooms same-sex or unisex. While administrative figures are struggling to make accommodations for the increasing number and popularity of LBGT rights, society is also struggling to determine whether trans-gender identity is a social or biological doing.

One recent finding has shown that anatomical sex- gender identity and orientation- is determined in the womb. However, once the anatomy is settled, there is about a six month lag before the brain masculinizes or feminizes. Research has concluded that through some combination of genetics, hormones and the uterine environment, sometime between six months and delivery the sexual orientation is set in the brain. The only question that rises is what happens when the brain does not match the genitals.

Genetics has been proved to play a role in transgender identity. Researches studied a group of twins where either one or both were transgender.  In identical twins, 39% were both transgender. Of the fraternal twins, there were zero pairs where both were transgender. In fact a study in the Journal Biological Psychiatry, researchers found a gene variant that was associated with being a trans woman.

For the 61% of identical twins where only one is transgender, the prenatal environment, or womb, had a key role. While identical twins share genetic codes, the genes that get expressed or remain unexpressed differ. Identical twins have separate umbilical cords , separate amniotic sacs, and develop in separate locations of the womb. All these things can have an affect in the mixing of chemicals and the sexual identity process.

Lastly, the structure of the brain also plays a role. A 2014 study from the Journal of Neuroscience found that “differences in the brain’s white matter tracts [fall] along a perfect spectrum of gender identity with cisgender men and women at the ends and trans men and women in the middle.”