Daphne Garrido
Preprint · September 2026 - Preprint on Zenodo
The Science of Gender Incongruence.pdf
There is a simple version of the science of gender identity that would be remarkably easy to explain.
Perhaps there is a particular gene that determines it. Or a prenatal hormone signal. Or a recognizable feature of the brain. Find the biological switch, and the mystery is solved.
After decades of research, that is not what scientists have found.
Instead, evidence has accumulated across genetics, developmental endocrinology, epigenetics, neuroscience, body perception, neurodevelopment, and social development. Many of these findings are meaningful. Some provide strong evidence about particular parts of human sexual development.
But none has emerged as a universal explanation for persistent gender incongruence.
That may be more than a temporary failure to find the right answer. It may tell us something important about the nature of the phenomenon itself.
The Science of Gender Incongruence asks whether gender incongruence is better understood not as the product of one developmental switch, but as a possible outcome of multiple interacting developmental systems.
To understand why, we first have to ask what scientists are actually trying to explain.
Research into gender development has not always measured the same thing.
Gender identity is a person's experienced gender. Gender expression concerns how gender is expressed or presented. Gender dysphoria refers to clinically significant distress. Gender incongruence describes incongruence between experienced gender and assigned sex. Childhood gender-typed behaviors, interests, and preferences are still other characteristics.
These phenomena can be related.
They are not interchangeable.
That distinction matters enormously.