#64 Robert Plomin : Some key insights from behavioural genetics

Vincent Debierre interviews Robert Plomin, Professor at King's College London.

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[nycbearff]

I was surprised that Professor Plomin dismissed Trans men as "men who wake up thinking they're women", who deny biology, after spending a career proving that a large part of each of our varying personal characteristics is genetic. If he is right about all his other claims about polygenic inheritance, it must also be true that whether one is or is not Transgender is also largely heritable - Trans people have been with us for a very long time.

Is Prof Plomin's dismissal of gender identity being different from one's X and Y chromosome configuration blind prejudice, or a reasoned conclusion based on evidence from his own field? What data from quantitative genetics studies supports him?

With the new chip technology it's easy to resolve the issue. Run that study on a large sample of non-Trans and Trans people, and then have other researchers replicate it - preferably in other, non-European, countries, like India or Iran, which have openly Trans populations. That should have a pretty clear outcome, one way or another. That's a politically tricky study to run - but Prof Plomin, as he says, is at the end of his career and can do as he likes.

So - is being non-Trans partly genetic or not? If so, how much? Does Prof Plomin's gender identity conform to his biological sex largely because of his own polygenic profile, or is his gender identity solely the result of environment?

[CelestiC]

Un anglais bien mieux prononcé et articulé 👌🏻