We Are Our Brains

While the adolescent PFC is still immature, parents have to be responsible for a child’s planning, organization, moral framework, and limits. These functions are gradually taken over by the slowly maturing PFC.

There was a time when an obscure mix of arguments bearing on eugenics, punishment, the protection of society, and the repression of homosexuality led to the castration of pedosexuals in the Netherlands. Between 1938 and 1968, at least four hundred sex offenders were “voluntarily” castrated. This practice wasn’t laid down by law. These were offenders detained under a hospital order who were given the choice of life imprisonment or castration. They had to submit a standard letter to the minister of justice, the text of which ran, “May I humbly crave Your Excellency’s permission to be castrated?” Up to 1950, 80 percent of the castrated men were pedosexuals, a situation complicated by the high legal age of sexual consent (sixteen). In Germany, the hypothalami of pedophiles were surgically lesioned in the hope that this would change their sexual orientation. These brain operations were never scientifically documented.

ll the data indicates that gender problems arise in the womb. Tiny variations in genes associated with the effect of hormones on brain development have been found to increase the likelihood of transsexuality. It can also be increased by abnormal fetal hormone levels or by medication taken during pregnancy that inhibits the breakdown of sex hormones. The differentiation of our sex organs takes place in the first months of pregnancy, while the sexual differentiation of the brain occurs in the second half of pregnancy. Since these two processes take place at different times, the theory is that in the case of transsexuality, they have been influenced independently of one another. If this is the case, one would expect to find female structures in the brains of MtF transsexuals and vice versa in the case of FtM transsexuals.