Posted: Jan 06, 2011 4:53 am
The issues with gender identity disorder are not a result of a conflict between the person's "natural" state and their "misfiring" resultant state. It's a conflict between society's beliefs about how sex and gender should be interchangeable, and the fact that some people's gender doesn't fall neatly in this pigeon hole. I'm not aware of the figures on GID, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't largely a problem in Western countries where there are strict expectations on how you should behave, whereas in other cultures there is a more realistic understanding of the variation in human behavior. In Samoa, for example, there is "male", "female" and a third option: Fa'afafine. This is when boys with clearly feminine behaviors (so males identifying with a feminine gender) are identified at an early age and essentially raised as females. Here I would imagine a very low level of GID since there is no room for mental distress as they are accepted as part of society.
Speaking as someone diagnosed with GID and who regularly interacts with OTHER people diagnosed with GID, I would disagree strongly. As I posted earlier, it had nothing to do with behavior for me personally and indeed much of the discussions that center around "how one knows" if one is transgendered or not has less to do with gender-specific behavior (however it is defined by one's society) than how one feels about their body specifically.
There is definitely a growing number of people that identify themselves as "genderqueer" or "third gender" or something of that nature, but the experiences I've had regarding even people who identify as such describe what they desire in terms of physicality (some sort of body that resembles some sort of intersex-esque condition) and not a desire to play with trucks and dolls simultaneously. :]
After all, the only known treatment for GID is physical transition. I feel strangely about my body, not my social role. If male and female social roles were completely flipped or even identical I would still desire a male body.
Unfortunately there have been very few good experiments done on/about transgendered people, or I would point you to some studies. :/ It makes it really difficult to have a discussion about this sort of thing outside of experiences, which are pretty much useless when you get down to it. All I can offer is my interpretation of how GID manifests itself, as someone who fit the criterion for diagnosis and has physically transitioned from female to male.