Serano's thoughts on Gender

In doing the readings for Julia Serano, I came across some interesting ideas that changed the way I thought about the transgender movement in general. Before reading Serano, I always thought that the transgender movement (for the most part) believed that gender identity was determined through socialization and other forms of institutional applications of power. In other words, I thought they believed that it is society that influences our gender roles. However, Serano suggests something a little different and more biological. She said that there have been studies performed on a small region of the brain named the BSTc region.  In trans women the BSTc region "closely resembles" the BSTc region of a woman. And conversely, the BSTc region in trans men resembles the region in men. Although Serano herself modestly shrugs it off and admits that such scientific studies have certain "limitations and caveats," I still think the idea that that could be the case is fascinating. For her, this brain hypothesis does give an explanation to the feelings of her childhood, but she isn't too quick to jump on the bandwagon. If there is some sort of predisposition towards a gender naturally in our brains, it would explain the dissonance that so many transgender people feel; also, it would probably get the people who claim that the transgender life is freely "chosen" to stop talking for awhile. Frankly, in the beginning of the class, I wasn't too sure if I would be very interested in the material for this class, but to my surprise, its a much more academic discipline than I had thought. There's a lot of area to be explored here that hasn't been explored much or at all in past years. Fun.