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What Is Gender Identity Disorder?

What is Gender Identity Disorder? Who has Gender Identity Disorder? Is Gender Identity Disorder a choice or a simple matter of birth mislabeled by the demands of societal normality’s and expectations? Everyday, we may come into contact with someone with Gender Identity disorder, and never know, either because they choose to hide it, or because they have undergone the transition that labels them as a transsexual. Yet if you did know, would the accepted norms of gender roles, and societal prejudice change how you treated them? Gender Identity disorder is not so much a matter of choice, as much as something predetermined in the womb, and developed throughout one’s life.
Gender identity disorder is not so much a simple issue of choice, but can be traced back to the womb.   While in the womb, the amount of testosterone present ultimately decides our physical sexuality, but also works in the development of our sexuality mentally and emotionally. One important factor to remember is that without testosterone, all fetuses would conclusively be female ( Bushong, N.A.).   The SRY gene, part of the Y chromosome, decides at conception which physical gender the fetus will be, detaching to create XY, a female, or attaching to an X to create XX, a male. However, during development, differences can occur, which can lead to a variety of conditions, which can form genitalia that is neither specifically male or female, thus, physical gender can be put into question right away, and the ultimate choice of whether the child is male or female is put into the hands of the parents and how they choose to raise it. Another area developed while in the womb is brain gender, which in most cases coincides with the physical gender, but hormones during development can induce the opposite brain gender as physical gender. This is apparent through behavior of infants, even right after birth, as Bushong states in his article What is Gender and Who is Transgendered?,
“significant behavioral differences...