Dr. Warren Throckmorton is director of college counseling and associate professor of psychology at Grove City College. He has seen close to 4,000 clients since he began counseling in 1980. Approximately 1-2 percent of his caseload involves people with “significant gender concerns” – a number that is about the same as the general population, he says.
Throckmorton believes that cultural misconceptions about gender are an important element driving GID and other gender issues like homosexuality.
“Just because [a boy] likes to dress up in girls’ clothes doesn’t mean that he was intended to be a girl,” Throckmorton says. “He might like color, color combinations and style. He might like certain aspects of what it means to be female, like sexual power, friendships and other things that are seen as typically female. He might look at that and wish he could be that way. There are boys who are not interested in trucks, sports or WWF. Some kids in the nursery are rough-and-tumble, while other kids prefer to sit and be held, or look at pretty things.”
These exceptions to the cultural rule can create a problem for some parents, Throckmorton says.
“We all know that it’s okay for girls to be tomboys, and a lot of guys like it when girls go out for softball and soccer,” he says. “But what we don’t tend to do well with is boys who are interested in music or the arts. Some boys just don’t like NASCAR but they do like music or art or drama, and they need the support of their fathers.”
The absence of that support, Throckmorton says, can give birth to the seeds of gender dysphoria.
A former president of the American Mental Health Counselors Association, Throckmorton is convinced that the overwhelming majority of GID cases are fueled by “nurture,” not “nature.” Prevailing cultural attitudes, the media and peer expectations also play a huge role.
“A lot of kids would never have had a same-sex attraction if they had not been called ‘gay’ or ‘fag,’” he says.
Nevertheless, Throckmorton insists that the issue is not a simple one, no matter how you look at it.
“In the Christian community, it’s been easy to buy the idea that we have the research. We don’t. Our research is no better than the genetic research.”
That genetic research remains a point of contention in the medical community.
Like Leach, Throckmorton has seen hundreds of people walk free from homosexual and transgender issues. But, from a clinical point of view, the debate still rages, even as the studies continue.
“I have no problem believing that our genders are hardwired by God,” Throckmorton says, referring to a recent study that found gender differences in the mouse brain prior to the hormonal developmental stage – a finding that was widely trumpeted by the media, the homosexual community and the transgendered community.
“Differences appear to occur much earlier than previously thought,” he says. “I tend to agree with that God would hardwire our genes genetic – not for sexual orientation or attraction, but by the fact that He had it in mind from the beginning. Tainted by sin, is it possible that someone gets hardwired with a female brain but gets a testosterone bath? I don’t know. I don’t want to go beyond the research, [but] mice are not humans. Gender is probably impacted by how we are raised but we may also be able to override that. We have no way of knowing, as humans, how that process might operate. However, we certainly don’t have any research that would support the kind of dogmatism that says people are born that way – and certainly not to tell someone on Oprah that.”
He adds, “The reasons why people do the things they do is as individual as they are, and that’s the problem with being dogmatic. Environment and our ability to think and reason, our will, sin and everything that makes us human makes any animal model of gender or sexuality insufficient.”
