Anyways, while Iām on a weird āintersection of evobio and trans biologyā kick, thereās a group Iāve been meaning to introduce for a while now because they do amazing work.
So Iām a biological anthropologist, and that means that I study and teach about the human skeleton. The human skeleton is an amazing thing, and a lot of people donāt know just how changeable it is. No matter what your chromosomal makeup is, human skeletons look pretty much the same until puberty. Then, when the sex hormones kick in, we get a bimodal distribution of traits. These arenāt inherent to your gender or your genitals or even your chromosomes, really. What the sexual characteristics in the human skeleton really represent is what your hormones are doing.
Basically, it works like this. All humans produce both testosterone and estrogen. Humans who make more testosterone are generally more robust, and their muscle development puts pressure on bones. The bones respond and they get bigger. Estrogen does the opposite. When we talk about sexing a skeleton, what we mean is āwhat did their hormones do, and where does this fit in the general bimodal distribution of morphological traits?ā
Exceptā¦ sometimes there are problems with this. For instance, postmenopausal skeletons, particularly the skulls, will often look more masculine because as estrogen production drops, the shape of the bones begins to change. The pelvis still looks as it did, but the bones of the face are highly responsive to these changes. (For many very complicated reasons, two being that they are smaller/thinner and also have highly active osteoblasts and osteoclasts!)
Another challenge comes from trans people going through hormone replacement therapy. We know that violence against trans people is a problem. But hereās the thing: these violent incidents and homicides are just the ones we KNOW about. There are thousands of unidentified bodies in the US alone that have the very real possibility of having an assessed sex that doesnāt align with a personās lived experience. If your skeleton looks one way, but everybody who knew you in life understood you as anotherā¦ even if youāre lucky enough to have a missing person report, your remains might never be matched to your identity. Also, many of these cases are primarily investigated byā¦ look, do I have to explain how the police see trans people and what they do to perpetuate harmful stereotypes of the kinds of lives trans people live?
So anyways, this group that I wanted to talk about, the Trans Doe Task Force, is working to fill the gaps that poor investigation, poor understandings of gender versus sex and how the two interact, and a general lack of knowledge about the complexities of skeletal development have left.
https://transdoetaskforce.org/
One of the coolest things- and most helpful things- this group does, in addition to forensic DNA testing and case reevaluation, is they go back to recreations/composite sketches of cases they identify as trans/gnc and create new images that are more reflective of peoplesā gender.
Something thatās really important about the remains of unidentified trans people is that unfortunately, due to prejudice, family members might not acknowledge how their relative has changed in both outward appearance andā¦ uh, inward appearance, I guess. Skeletal changes. On the flip side of that coin, people who knew the trans person as they were before their disappearance might not be aware of how they looked in the past. The TDTF has also helped create forensic images of various stages of transition to show relatives/friends/loved ones.
Itās really important that we in the anthropological community talk about skeletal changes that happen throughout life. Thereās a persistent myth that by looking at the skull alone, you can neatly fit it into categories of male/female or racial categories. But you canātā¦ reallyā¦ do that. Not without knowing your references. (If youāre interested in the race thing, Iāve talked about that at length here.) The fact is, human biology is MESSY and while we do have a bimodal distribution for our morphology, not everybody fits into categories neatlyā¦ and many people fit more than one identifying category. For sex/gender, when youāre looking at ancient populations, you can only make estimations. But when youāre looking at modern populations- when youāre trying to fit a specific identity to a set of remains- itās extremely important that you consider the role of things like HRT in your potential identification. This is extra important when youāre looking at a vulnerable population whose disappearance might not get immediately reported or whose disappearance might not be of top priority to law enforcement.
So go check out the Trans Doe Task Force. The work they do is important.
