Gay\transgender -- not by genetics, not by upbringing, not by choice

An interesting article:Identical twin boys, one transgender become brother and sister - The Boston Globe

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Led by the child who simply knew

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The twin boys were identical in every way but one. Wyatt was a girl to the core, and now lives as one, with the help of a brave, loving family and a path-breaking doctor’s care.

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Jonas and Wyatt Maines were born identical twins, but from the start each had a distinct personality.

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‘Wyatt needs hair accessories, clothes, shoes . . . likes to wear bikinis, high heels, mini-skirts.’

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Jonas was all boy. He loved Spiderman, action figures, pirates, and swords.

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Wyatt favored pink tutus and beads. At 4, he insisted on a Barbie birthday cake and had a thing for mermaids. On Halloween, Jonas was Buzz Lightyear. Wyatt wanted to be a princess; his mother compromised on a prince costume.

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Once, when Wyatt appeared in a sequin shirt and his mother’s heels, his father said: You don’t want to wear that.’’

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Yes, I do,’’ Wyatt replied.

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Dad, you might as well face it,’’ Wayne recalls Jonas saying. You have a son and a daughter.’’

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That early declaration marked, as much as any one moment could, the beginning of a journey that few have taken, one the Maineses themselves couldn’t have imagined until it was theirs. The process of remaking a family of identical twin boys into a family with one boy and one girl has been heartbreaking and harrowing and, in the end, inspiring - a lesson in the courage of a child, a child who led them, and in the transformational power of love.

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Wayne and Kelly Maines have struggled to know whether they are doing the right things for their children, especially for Wyatt, who now goes by the name Nicole. Was he merely expressing a softer side of his personality, or was he really what he kept saying: a girl in a boy’s body? Was he exhibiting early signs that he might be gay?Was it even possible, at such a young age, to determine what exactly was going on?

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We can rule out genetics.
We can rule out upbringing.
We can rule out "choice".What's left is fetal development - the process that builds a fetus from the genetic recipe - and a mutation in the progress of that development in one fetus.Enjoy.

perhaps in coffee house?

Now we can see if this takes off

Hi Panda, There are plenty of studies on genetic\developmental differences in twins (google, birth defects among twins, scholarly articles) Twins, triplets have greater chance of birth defects

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The same team of researchers, from UF's Maternal Child Health Education Research and Data Center, studied 4,768 pairs of opposite-sex twins and found that boys had a 29 percent higher risk for birth defects than girls. This could be because boys tend to develop at a slower pace, leaving a little more time for potential problems to arise, according to findings published this month in Birth Defects Research (Part A): Clinical and Molecular Teratology.

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They say developmental effects rather than genetic. Even when they know they have genetic differences (MF twins). In this specific case the family says the differences started too soon for them to have significantly different experiences.Enjoy.

Hi Taz, Affecting one and not the other? Hormones are part of the environmental factors during gestation, as is zeus. And I agree that it has nothing to do with individual rights. But this set of twins shows that the behavior patterns started at a significantly younger age than sexual development. Have you actually tried it? Curiously, I did when I was young and adventurous (free love hippy days), and it didn't work, even in mixed company. From my, admittedly anecdotal experiences, I conclude that one can only choose whether to express or repress the sexuality that one has.Enjoy.

Hi Tangle, What other factors are there? I see environmental rather broadly (hormones and chemicals, temperatures, nutrients, etc), and we are talking about behavioral traits showing up rather soon after birth. Implying that these are developmental differences rather than genetic differences. This would be good reason for random patterns in fingerprints for instance rather than family similarities. That is where I go on this one: developmental differences in when gene expression is keyed to occur. This is also consilient with the twin study cited above on birth defects.Enjoy.

Hi Straggler, Michael Jackson?Enjoy.