Chapter 2. What It Means to Be Gender Variant: A developmental review

There is a growing body of evidence that Gender Identity Disorder (GID) as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (DSM IV-TR) is, at least in part, the result of insufficient or inappropriate masculinization / defeminization of the brain at a critical stage of embryonic development, essentially creating a not-male, not-female but otherwise permanent gender variant condition. As a result, the affected individual may be left with somewhere between a partial and a full sense of having a cross-sexed gender identity. This chapter describes how the resulting gender permutation affects the individual across their life span.