Gender Identity and Phantom Genitalia

SFGate.com – Sandra Blakeslee

Some people know, with absolute certainty, that they were born the wrong gender.

A girl sees that she has no phallus, yet she feels deeply, unambiguously male. A boy is equipped with a penis, yet he feels fundamentally, unarguably female.

Such discord often gets chalked up to the physical – prenatal hormone exposures, abnormal brain structures, gay genes. Or to the psychological – repressed homosexuality, absent dads, overbearing moms, parents who wanted a baby of the opposite sex.