Discuss Explanations of Gender Dysphoria

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Discuss explanations of gender dysphoria (24 marks) Gender dysphoria is an individual’s experience of feeling uncomfortable with the gender assigned to them at birth. Gender identity disorder (GID) is the psychiatric classification for people experiencing gender dysphoria whereby the person does not have an intersex condition such as AIS or CAH. There are both psychosocial explanations and biological explanations for gender dysphoria. Psychosocial explanations focus on a person’s psychological development in, and interaction with, a social environment, whilst biological explanations focus on a persons genes and hormones. One psychosocial explanation suggests that gender dysphoria is linked to some childhood trauma or maladaptive upbringing. Coates et al produced a case history of a boy who had developed GID. They proposed that the boy’s disorder was a defensive reaction to his mother’s depression following an abortion. The trauma happened when the boy was only 3, which is the age in which children are particularly sensitive to gender issues. Coates et al propose that the trauma led to a cross gender fantasy as a means of resolving the ensuing anxiety. Another psychosocial explanation is the effect of mother-son relationships. Stoller found that GID is often a result of distorted parent attitudes. He interviewed GID individuals and found that the majority displayed overly close mother-son relationships. Therefore, this may have led to greater female identification and confused gender identity. One biological explanation suggests that prenatal hormone levels may be affected by genetic conditions and this may lead to a mismatch between hormones and genetic sex. For example, some genetic males do not respond to male hormones in the womb and therefore no external genitalia develops (AIS) This may result in a intersex condition when external genitalia does
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