Serotonin (5-HT) is a key neurotransmitter that regulates numerous functions such as appetite, sleep, memory and learning, mood, behavior, and sexuality amongst other operations of the central nervous system (CNS) (1). As such, its significant bearing on our lives is undeniable: with normal synaptic levels of serotonin, we can live as content, functioning human beings.

Over the summer, I struggled with gender identity issues—though I hate to describe it that way, both because it sounds like I’m pathologizing myself and because it felt less like a “struggle” and more like a long-needed exploration of some aspects of my identity that I’d heretofore neglected or perhaps repressed. I talk to some friends, did some research, and eventually “came out”—if that’s what it was—to a few people. Towards the end of the summer, I felt fairly certain that I wanted to be—would be happier as—a woman.

One night, a friend from out of town visited me, and we got into a pretty heated argument about gender identity. At the center of this argument was a simple question that he posed to me: how was it possible that I “felt like” a woman?

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 1222 5869 Bryn Mawr College 167 58 8558

          At first glance, blogs appear as only a medium, a different method to present textual information.  I once possessed this narrow view of blogs, and saw them as simply a new way of expressing oneself: once written in a journal, diaries had now moved to the internet forum.  I wasn’t considering the comprehensive scope of blogs in the beginning; now it is clear to me, through reading the analyses of blogs, such as in jo(e)’s posting, that blogs are actually an emerging genre.

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Liz Frontino                                                                                                                                                           2/23/10                                                &#16