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Trans woman here. Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, and transgender people's brain structures tend to resemble that of the gender that t

Trans woman here. Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, and transgender people's brain structures tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as[1]. So, for example, a trans woman like myself who was born male will have a brain structure that resembles that of a cis woman, not a man. > I know a trans man who, after a few months of testosterone, claimed it was "night and day" in how they felt about and processed the world This has been my experience as well (except, the opposite direction, obviously). The way I look at it, before I realized I am transgender, when testosterone was the dominant sex hormone in my body, it was like putting the wrong fuel in a car. It caused a whole slew of serious mental health problems. Estrogen has allowed me to think more clearly, and process thoughts, feelings, and emotions like I never could before. I'll never go back. 1. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/research-on-the-transgender-brain-what-you-should-know/ https://health.clevelandclinic.org/research-on-the-transgend...

codesushi42 7y ago
How can you be so sure that your brain structure is actually different? Are there any scientific tests that can be performed to support this?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rideontime 7y ago
  The article she offered directly links to them...
  - codesushi42 7y ago
    Was she part of the study?
    - rideontime 7y ago
      Ah, I didn't realize how specific your use of "your" was, perhaps because she didn't make any claims about the structure of her own brain.
    - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
      If someone is left-handed, and left-handedness has been shown to be very strongly correlated with a different brain structure, would you challenge them similarly if they state that they have a different brain structure because they are left handed? Do you need to personally participate in studies to know anything about your body?
      - codesushi42 7y ago
        I would if I were to undergo an invasive medical procedure.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  Dick Swaab of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience is a pioneer in the neuroscience underlying gender identity. In the mid-1990s, his group examined the postmortem brains of six transgender women and reported that the size of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc or BNSTc), a sexually dimorphic area in the forebrain known to be important to sexual behavior, was closer to that of cisgender women than cisgender men.[1] A follow-up study of autopsied brains also found similarities in the number of a certain class of neurons in the BSTc between transgender women and their cisgender counterparts—and between a transgender man and cisgender men.[2] These differences did not appear to be attributable to the influence of endogenous sex hormone fluctuations or hormone treatment in adulthood. In another study published in 2008, Swaab and a coauthor examined the postmortem volume of the INAH3 subnucleus, an area of the hypothalamus previously linked to sexual orientation. The researchers found that this region was about twice as big in cisgender men as in women, whether trans- or cisgender.[3] [1] J.-N. Zhou et al., “A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality,” Nature, 378:68-70, 1995. [2] F.P. Kruijver, “Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus,” J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 85:2034-41, 2000. [3] A. Garcia-Falgueras, D. Swaab, “A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity,” Brain, 131:3132-46, 2008. --- All of the above is from the first google result and about 30 seconds of searching. https://www.the-scientist.com/features/are-the-brains-of-transgender-people-different-from-those-of-cisgender-people-30027 https://www.the-scientist.com/features/are-the-brains-of-tra... So, yeah, science is beginning to try and understand this stuff.
  - mjevans 7y ago
    I wonder if something like an MRI could allow medical professionals or diagnostic systems to automatically categorize this non-invasively? When we reach a world where everyone has more star trek level medical care then a true survey of the population may allow for everyone to have improved lives.
    - somebodythere 7y ago
      Perhaps. I'm a little concerned that if this approach is used for diagnostics that it becomes another form of gatekeeping. (i.e. someone is transgender but denied treatment because their brain scans come up as cis.)
- sixstringtheory 7y ago
  Other commenters are linking to _studies_, I think parent is asking if GP had a _test_ done for them that specifically showed them their brain structure. Big difference between a study and a consumer-/patient- ready product. At least, studies could mean the product is forthcoming. When I search "brain structure test" I get IQ/personality quiz web pages. "brain structure medical procedure" gets me general information on brain anatomy and glossaries of neurosurgical terms. "{gender|trans} identity brain structure procedure" similarly returns scholarly information. Nothing on a procedure I could schedule with my doctor, but maybe it's easier to ask my doctor than use Google. Maybe someone with better Google-fu could suggest better keywords. Has anyone done this or asked their doctor about it? I know I'd be interested in what my brain looks like in this regard!
- danbolt 7y ago
  Baltimore Maryland, is that you?
TheOperator 7y ago
>Tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as I hear this claim a lot but I've never actually understood what "resembles" actually means. The brain structures that transgender people have don't match typical male or female brains but how do you determine which brain transgender brains resemble the most? What is the criteria? To me to determine which brain trans brains were more similar to you would have to study a LOT of dimorphic brain structures. Some structures in transgender brains do resemble their sex or are sort of androgynous and inbetween. So I don't know how accurate trans woman = "resembles" a woman's brain actually is as a sweeping statement. In my experience trans women have rarely acted completely like either gender. I've seen trans women disperportionately engaging in masculine hobbies like computers compared to the average cis woman.
- seph-reed 7y ago
  I'm the antithesis of an expert in this. If someone has better information, I'm sure you'll let me know. What I've picked up thus far as the consistent physical differences between male and female brains are: 1. Dominant synapse connection direction. Males typically have more front to back connections than side to side. This may explain why females typically are better at multi-tasking, and males are typically more focused. 2. Testosterone in the womb enlarges the 3d manipulation part of the brain. 3. Testosterone in the womb has some connection to sexuality. In particular, women typically show signs of arousal towards sex without any filter (ie, animals, same gender, w/e). Typical males will show no signs of arousal to certain things (typically other males). Also, twins boys have a significantly greater likelihood of homosexuality (less testosterone to go around). There's plenty of other differences I'm sure, and many of these may not be true. But this is what I've noted thus far.
  - lazyasciiart 7y ago
    That multitasking claim is looking less solid these days - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0220150 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
  - perl4ever 7y ago
norswap 7y ago
Can't the brain structure be affected by the hormones being taken?
anaisbetts 7y ago
> it was like putting the wrong fuel in a car This is a great metaphor, thanks for sharing this
sysbin 7y ago
That study is worthless based on the small sample size. I'm also a trans woman and I hate when this study is brought up. I think brain development could be a reason but I also think how a person is raised could play into being transgender for some people. Our generation will likely never know for certain. I just don't think there is an all encompassing answer for everyone.
- sizzle 7y ago
  Very balanced response, thank you.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  I don't understand the matter of it either. If you badly feel you're in the wrong body and you want it changed, I'm ok with that. I don't see any other reasons are needed.
  - sysbin 7y ago
    I think your accepting outlook of the situation will be the popular approach for the new generation from what I've observed. The "other reasons" have been pushed because of non-transgender people rejecting transgender people. There is a culture of God made you whatever sex and that's how it must be in your life. These people have had a very negative impact on transgender people and resulted in accepting/ trans people seeking "other reasons" in an attempt of more justification that's really unnecessary.
  - CapricornNoble 7y ago
    >>>If you badly feel you're in the wrong body and you want it changed, I'm ok with that. I don't see any other reasons are needed. Should this apply to other physical/genetic characteristics as well, such as ethnicity? Should Caucausians be able to change their physical appearance (via tanning, etc...) to Native American, identify as such (cough Elizabeth Warren cough), and then be entitled to any/all social benefits legally accorded to Native American people? What sort of implications would that have, internationally? Say someone has their body altered to appear Han Chinese, and then they go to China, expecting to be treated as a Chinese (or at least an ABC), because that's how they "identify". What are the second and third-order implications for how the world views American leadership?
spicyramen 7y ago
"I know a person" is a typical response from the noveau pseudo scientific trans movement, no one really understands this condition yet, and hopefully science can figure it out, although science around this topic has been shut down by the "progressive" movement. https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-03-19/gender https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-03-19/gender
- undoware 7y ago
  Trans activist here. What we've shut down, basically, is the lengthy history of medical abuse and trauma that cis supremacists have inflicted on our people. Have a nice day. Stay in your lane.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't respond to a bad comment by taking the thread further into flamewar. Down that path lies wreckage, regardless of who's right and who's wrong. And it breaks the site guidelines as well. As they say, the thing to do with egregious comments is to flag them and/or to email hn@ycombinator.com—not to feed them by replying. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 7y ago
  It breaks the site guidelines to post shallow dismissals of other people's experience, so please don't. Taking HN threads into ideological flamewar is even worse, so please don't either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Knowing a person is a perfectly cromulent reason to say something in a conversation. Conversations is all HN threads are. Anecdotes are great for conversation (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20conversation%20anecdote&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
jrochkind1 7y ago
> Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, I'm skeptical of this to begin with. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neuroscientist-shattering-the-myth-of-the-gendered-brain-gina-rippon https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neu... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/confirmed-theres-no-such-thing-male-or-female-brain-180957417/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/confirmed-theres-n... When it comes to brains, there is far more variation, on pretty much anything you choose to measure, within the group of 'men' or 'women', then there is between the groups. As far as cognitive empathy, sorry fellow men, we can't blame our lack of cognitive empathy on biology, it's probably pure socialization/education. And we can get better at it by trying/learning/practicing.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  >As far as cognitive empathy, sorry fellow men, we can't blame our lack of cognitive empathy on biology Are you claiming that there is zero biological influence on this well documented phenomenon that exists across cultures?
- kofejnik 7y ago
  There's more variation of height within male and female groups than between groups, but still you can confidently say that on average males are taller; so "far more variation within the group" doesn't say much > can't blame our lack of cognitive empathy on biology, it's probably pure socialization/education Any evidence? A study linked from one of your links says: "Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain." So it looks like there are, actually, differences. Also, it is kind of assumed that we need more cognitive empathy; but why exactly, and how much is too much?
thenewonearound 7y ago
Depending on the study, 30%-85% of young people who identify as trans will desist by adulthood if not medically transitioned. Do their brains change back to their birth sex when that happens?
friendlybus 7y ago
There was a really nice video that supports your point on youtube back in 2013. A lady scientist was doing a talk in a small european country about gender in rats. She found she could get male rats to 'present' and female rats to mount if she messed with 3 distinct moments of hormonal gender influence. One in the womb, one as a young child and one point at puberty. She went on to describe how male rats prefer risky behaviour because they beeline for cheese in the middle of a pool of water on an island and how female rats are more risk averse and swim around the outside edge first. I have found it impossible to find that video anymore. I don't know why we have to rely on questionable studies when there has been much better work been done and now black-holed.

codesushi42 7y ago

How can you be so sure that your brain structure is actually different? Are there any scientific tests that can be performed to support this?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rideontime 7y ago
The article she offered directly links to them...
- codesushi42 7y ago
  Was she part of the study?
  - rideontime 7y ago
    Ah, I didn't realize how specific your use of "your" was, perhaps because she didn't make any claims about the structure of her own brain.
  - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
    If someone is left-handed, and left-handedness has been shown to be very strongly correlated with a different brain structure, would you challenge them similarly if they state that they have a different brain structure because they are left handed? Do you need to personally participate in studies to know anything about your body?
    - codesushi42 7y ago
      I would if I were to undergo an invasive medical procedure.
Pfhreak 7y ago
Dick Swaab of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience is a pioneer in the neuroscience underlying gender identity. In the mid-1990s, his group examined the postmortem brains of six transgender women and reported that the size of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc or BNSTc), a sexually dimorphic area in the forebrain known to be important to sexual behavior, was closer to that of cisgender women than cisgender men.[1] A follow-up study of autopsied brains also found similarities in the number of a certain class of neurons in the BSTc between transgender women and their cisgender counterparts—and between a transgender man and cisgender men.[2] These differences did not appear to be attributable to the influence of endogenous sex hormone fluctuations or hormone treatment in adulthood. In another study published in 2008, Swaab and a coauthor examined the postmortem volume of the INAH3 subnucleus, an area of the hypothalamus previously linked to sexual orientation. The researchers found that this region was about twice as big in cisgender men as in women, whether trans- or cisgender.[3] [1] J.-N. Zhou et al., “A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality,” Nature, 378:68-70, 1995. [2] F.P. Kruijver, “Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus,” J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 85:2034-41, 2000. [3] A. Garcia-Falgueras, D. Swaab, “A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity,” Brain, 131:3132-46, 2008. --- All of the above is from the first google result and about 30 seconds of searching. https://www.the-scientist.com/features/are-the-brains-of-transgender-people-different-from-those-of-cisgender-people-30027 https://www.the-scientist.com/features/are-the-brains-of-tra... So, yeah, science is beginning to try and understand this stuff.
- mjevans 7y ago
  I wonder if something like an MRI could allow medical professionals or diagnostic systems to automatically categorize this non-invasively? When we reach a world where everyone has more star trek level medical care then a true survey of the population may allow for everyone to have improved lives.
  - somebodythere 7y ago
    Perhaps. I'm a little concerned that if this approach is used for diagnostics that it becomes another form of gatekeeping. (i.e. someone is transgender but denied treatment because their brain scans come up as cis.)
sixstringtheory 7y ago
Other commenters are linking to _studies_, I think parent is asking if GP had a _test_ done for them that specifically showed them their brain structure. Big difference between a study and a consumer-/patient- ready product. At least, studies could mean the product is forthcoming. When I search "brain structure test" I get IQ/personality quiz web pages. "brain structure medical procedure" gets me general information on brain anatomy and glossaries of neurosurgical terms. "{gender|trans} identity brain structure procedure" similarly returns scholarly information. Nothing on a procedure I could schedule with my doctor, but maybe it's easier to ask my doctor than use Google. Maybe someone with better Google-fu could suggest better keywords. Has anyone done this or asked their doctor about it? I know I'd be interested in what my brain looks like in this regard!
danbolt 7y ago
Baltimore Maryland, is that you?

TheOperator 7y ago

>Tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as I hear this claim a lot but I've never actually understood what "resembles" actually means. The brain structures that transgender people have don't match typical male or female brains but how do you determine which brain transgender brains resemble the most? What is the criteria? To me to determine which brain trans brains were more similar to you would have to study a LOT of dimorphic brain structures. Some structures in transgender brains do resemble their sex or are sort of androgynous and inbetween. So I don't know how accurate trans woman = "resembles" a woman's brain actually is as a sweeping statement. In my experience trans women have rarely acted completely like either gender. I've seen trans women disperportionately engaging in masculine hobbies like computers compared to the average cis woman.

seph-reed 7y ago
I'm the antithesis of an expert in this. If someone has better information, I'm sure you'll let me know. What I've picked up thus far as the consistent physical differences between male and female brains are: 1. Dominant synapse connection direction. Males typically have more front to back connections than side to side. This may explain why females typically are better at multi-tasking, and males are typically more focused. 2. Testosterone in the womb enlarges the 3d manipulation part of the brain. 3. Testosterone in the womb has some connection to sexuality. In particular, women typically show signs of arousal towards sex without any filter (ie, animals, same gender, w/e). Typical males will show no signs of arousal to certain things (typically other males). Also, twins boys have a significantly greater likelihood of homosexuality (less testosterone to go around). There's plenty of other differences I'm sure, and many of these may not be true. But this is what I've noted thus far.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  That multitasking claim is looking less solid these days - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0220150 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- perl4ever 7y ago

norswap 7y ago

Can't the brain structure be affected by the hormones being taken?

anaisbetts 7y ago

> it was like putting the wrong fuel in a car This is a great metaphor, thanks for sharing this

sysbin 7y ago

That study is worthless based on the small sample size. I'm also a trans woman and I hate when this study is brought up. I think brain development could be a reason but I also think how a person is raised could play into being transgender for some people. Our generation will likely never know for certain. I just don't think there is an all encompassing answer for everyone.

sizzle 7y ago
Very balanced response, thank you.
tempguy9999 7y ago
I don't understand the matter of it either. If you badly feel you're in the wrong body and you want it changed, I'm ok with that. I don't see any other reasons are needed.
- sysbin 7y ago
  I think your accepting outlook of the situation will be the popular approach for the new generation from what I've observed. The "other reasons" have been pushed because of non-transgender people rejecting transgender people. There is a culture of God made you whatever sex and that's how it must be in your life. These people have had a very negative impact on transgender people and resulted in accepting/ trans people seeking "other reasons" in an attempt of more justification that's really unnecessary.
- CapricornNoble 7y ago
  >>>If you badly feel you're in the wrong body and you want it changed, I'm ok with that. I don't see any other reasons are needed. Should this apply to other physical/genetic characteristics as well, such as ethnicity? Should Caucausians be able to change their physical appearance (via tanning, etc...) to Native American, identify as such (cough Elizabeth Warren cough), and then be entitled to any/all social benefits legally accorded to Native American people? What sort of implications would that have, internationally? Say someone has their body altered to appear Han Chinese, and then they go to China, expecting to be treated as a Chinese (or at least an ABC), because that's how they "identify". What are the second and third-order implications for how the world views American leadership?

spicyramen 7y ago

"I know a person" is a typical response from the noveau pseudo scientific trans movement, no one really understands this condition yet, and hopefully science can figure it out, although science around this topic has been shut down by the "progressive" movement. https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-03-19/gender https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-03-19/gender

undoware 7y ago
Trans activist here. What we've shut down, basically, is the lengthy history of medical abuse and trauma that cis supremacists have inflicted on our people. Have a nice day. Stay in your lane.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't respond to a bad comment by taking the thread further into flamewar. Down that path lies wreckage, regardless of who's right and who's wrong. And it breaks the site guidelines as well. As they say, the thing to do with egregious comments is to flag them and/or to email hn@ycombinator.com—not to feed them by replying. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 7y ago
It breaks the site guidelines to post shallow dismissals of other people's experience, so please don't. Taking HN threads into ideological flamewar is even worse, so please don't either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Knowing a person is a perfectly cromulent reason to say something in a conversation. Conversations is all HN threads are. Anecdotes are great for conversation (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20conversation%20anecdote&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

jrochkind1 7y ago

> Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, I'm skeptical of this to begin with. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neuroscientist-shattering-the-myth-of-the-gendered-brain-gina-rippon https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neu... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/confirmed-theres-no-such-thing-male-or-female-brain-180957417/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/confirmed-theres-n... When it comes to brains, there is far more variation, on pretty much anything you choose to measure, within the group of 'men' or 'women', then there is between the groups. As far as cognitive empathy, sorry fellow men, we can't blame our lack of cognitive empathy on biology, it's probably pure socialization/education. And we can get better at it by trying/learning/practicing.

remarkEon 7y ago
>As far as cognitive empathy, sorry fellow men, we can't blame our lack of cognitive empathy on biology Are you claiming that there is zero biological influence on this well documented phenomenon that exists across cultures?
kofejnik 7y ago
There's more variation of height within male and female groups than between groups, but still you can confidently say that on average males are taller; so "far more variation within the group" doesn't say much > can't blame our lack of cognitive empathy on biology, it's probably pure socialization/education Any evidence? A study linked from one of your links says: "Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain." So it looks like there are, actually, differences. Also, it is kind of assumed that we need more cognitive empathy; but why exactly, and how much is too much?

thenewonearound 7y ago

Depending on the study, 30%-85% of young people who identify as trans will desist by adulthood if not medically transitioned. Do their brains change back to their birth sex when that happens?

friendlybus 7y ago

There was a really nice video that supports your point on youtube back in 2013. A lady scientist was doing a talk in a small european country about gender in rats. She found she could get male rats to 'present' and female rats to mount if she messed with 3 distinct moments of hormonal gender influence. One in the womb, one as a young child and one point at puberty. She went on to describe how male rats prefer risky behaviour because they beeline for cheese in the middle of a pool of water on an island and how female rats are more risk averse and swim around the outside edge first. I have found it impossible to find that video anymore. I don't know why we have to rely on questionable studies when there has been much better work been done and now black-holed.