5 ms·

>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 bra

>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
  "Also, twins boys have a significantly greater likelihood of homosexuality (less testosterone to go around)." Is the theory that male homosexual=less testosterone really more accepted than male homosexual=more testosterone? I feel like the latter has been argued extensively.
  - seph-reed 7y ago
    I did a project on theories behind sexual attraction about 12 years ago for my anthropology class. I'm pretty sure the testosterone bit had more to do with the mother than the children.
sverona 7y ago
Trans woman here. I agree that the neuroscience feels kind of flimsy. I would further argue that neuroscience shouldn't be used as an argument in favor of "accept trans women as being women" because, among other things, it can just as quickly be turned around by people who seek to pull the You're Not Really Trans Unless A Doctor Says So card on other trans folks. We're women because we say we are - and that's really all there is to say about it. We are disproportionately into things like coding because, growing up, the vast majority of us are socialized the same way as boys would be. Amazingly, it turns out that in a vacuum, the activity of programming a computer isn't actually gendered.
- shard972 7y ago
  I don't think we have proven that programming is gender neutral at all. We currently are engaging as a whole in gender discrimination against males to the point that we see that there are many more trans females than trans males programmers and yet we aren't even close to 50/50.
- zwkrt 7y ago
  > Amazingly, it turns out that in a vacuum, the activity of programming a computer isn't actually gendered. Also mirrored by the fact that other cultures do not experience this issue so acutely.
  - pessimizer 7y ago
    Including US culture 50 or more years ago, when most programmers were women.
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      I'm of the impression that this is a misconception. 50 years ago, "programmer" was a different job. Imagine if executives were just called secretaries now and that's a decent analogy for what I think happened to programmers and architects.
      - 7y ago
belorn 7y ago
As I recall from the lecture by Robert Sapolsky, researcher can look at a preserved brain and determine with a fairly good accuracy if the brain came from a woman or a man. Experiments has then show that for transgender people the same is true for the gender the brains person identified as, including for people who has not undergone any hormone treatment. I would have to rewatch those lectures to see if he gave any direct examples of markers, numbers, or sample size.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Is the size alone enough to do that with a "fairly good accuracy"? I can't help thinking of all the deep learning tests that inadvertently found unwanted shortcuts.
stanfordkid 7y ago
Brains are messy things and the argument of the article linked is reductionist (as are most papers which make hand-wavy assertions that one brain is "similar" to another). MRI studies with small sample sizes such as the one linked are almost always underpowered [1] All the study conclusively proves is that both trans women and regular women don't react as viscerally to porn as much as the average man. The actual connectivity and structure that yields similarity in activation between trans and cis women may be completely different. [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184923 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- daenz 7y ago
  >trans women and regular women Side note observation, "regular women" can be perceived as insensitive to trans women. I'm not sure what the best term to use is either though, when differentiating between trans and non-trans of the same gender. "Biological women"?
  - nailer 7y ago
    'non-trans' works fine and is clearer to most people. 'cisgendered' is also correct, but it has political connotations, eg 'cishet scum'. WikiPedia has some good references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender
    - geofft 7y ago
      I think the insulting part of "cishet scum" is "scum." I definitely see "cis" and occasionally "cishet" as entirely denotative self-identifications in spaces where it's relevant and trans and non-heterosexual folks are at least more visibly represented than in the world at large, and it's neither positive nor negative, it's just what one is. The phrase "male chauvinist" doesn't mean there's an intrinsic negative connotation in calling someone "male," nor does the phrase "nasty woman" mean it's intrinsically negative to call someone a "woman." (Of course, both terms might be used as insults in context / with tone / etc.)
civilian 7y ago
No one has included a link to the study yet! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/22/transgender-brain-scans-promised-study-shows-structural-differences/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/22/transgender-brai... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.h... Related to this is the idea of dual-gender human chimers. (Research article) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216874877_Dual-gender_macrochimeric_tissue_discordance_is_predicted_to_be_a_significant_cause_of_human_homosexuality_and_transgenderism https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216874877_Dual-gend... (Layperson-friendly blog post by the same author) https://medium.com/@brianhanley/many-transgender-and-gay-people-are-dual-sex-chimeras-e042c2a0e8dd https://medium.com/@brianhanley/many-transgender-and-gay-peo...

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
"Also, twins boys have a significantly greater likelihood of homosexuality (less testosterone to go around)." Is the theory that male homosexual=less testosterone really more accepted than male homosexual=more testosterone? I feel like the latter has been argued extensively.
- seph-reed 7y ago
  I did a project on theories behind sexual attraction about 12 years ago for my anthropology class. I'm pretty sure the testosterone bit had more to do with the mother than the children.

sverona 7y ago

Trans woman here. I agree that the neuroscience feels kind of flimsy. I would further argue that neuroscience shouldn't be used as an argument in favor of "accept trans women as being women" because, among other things, it can just as quickly be turned around by people who seek to pull the You're Not Really Trans Unless A Doctor Says So card on other trans folks. We're women because we say we are - and that's really all there is to say about it. We are disproportionately into things like coding because, growing up, the vast majority of us are socialized the same way as boys would be. Amazingly, it turns out that in a vacuum, the activity of programming a computer isn't actually gendered.

shard972 7y ago
I don't think we have proven that programming is gender neutral at all. We currently are engaging as a whole in gender discrimination against males to the point that we see that there are many more trans females than trans males programmers and yet we aren't even close to 50/50.
zwkrt 7y ago
> Amazingly, it turns out that in a vacuum, the activity of programming a computer isn't actually gendered. Also mirrored by the fact that other cultures do not experience this issue so acutely.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  Including US culture 50 or more years ago, when most programmers were women.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    I'm of the impression that this is a misconception. 50 years ago, "programmer" was a different job. Imagine if executives were just called secretaries now and that's a decent analogy for what I think happened to programmers and architects.
    - 7y ago

belorn 7y ago

As I recall from the lecture by Robert Sapolsky, researcher can look at a preserved brain and determine with a fairly good accuracy if the brain came from a woman or a man. Experiments has then show that for transgender people the same is true for the gender the brains person identified as, including for people who has not undergone any hormone treatment. I would have to rewatch those lectures to see if he gave any direct examples of markers, numbers, or sample size.

perl4ever 7y ago
Is the size alone enough to do that with a "fairly good accuracy"? I can't help thinking of all the deep learning tests that inadvertently found unwanted shortcuts.

stanfordkid 7y ago

Brains are messy things and the argument of the article linked is reductionist (as are most papers which make hand-wavy assertions that one brain is "similar" to another). MRI studies with small sample sizes such as the one linked are almost always underpowered [1] All the study conclusively proves is that both trans women and regular women don't react as viscerally to porn as much as the average man. The actual connectivity and structure that yields similarity in activation between trans and cis women may be completely different. [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184923 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

daenz 7y ago
>trans women and regular women Side note observation, "regular women" can be perceived as insensitive to trans women. I'm not sure what the best term to use is either though, when differentiating between trans and non-trans of the same gender. "Biological women"?
- nailer 7y ago
  'non-trans' works fine and is clearer to most people. 'cisgendered' is also correct, but it has political connotations, eg 'cishet scum'. WikiPedia has some good references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender
  - geofft 7y ago
    I think the insulting part of "cishet scum" is "scum." I definitely see "cis" and occasionally "cishet" as entirely denotative self-identifications in spaces where it's relevant and trans and non-heterosexual folks are at least more visibly represented than in the world at large, and it's neither positive nor negative, it's just what one is. The phrase "male chauvinist" doesn't mean there's an intrinsic negative connotation in calling someone "male," nor does the phrase "nasty woman" mean it's intrinsically negative to call someone a "woman." (Of course, both terms might be used as insults in context / with tone / etc.)

civilian 7y ago

No one has included a link to the study yet! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/22/transgender-brain-scans-promised-study-shows-structural-differences/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/22/transgender-brai... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.h... Related to this is the idea of dual-gender human chimers. (Research article) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216874877_Dual-gender_macrochimeric_tissue_discordance_is_predicted_to_be_a_significant_cause_of_human_homosexuality_and_transgenderism https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216874877_Dual-gend... (Layperson-friendly blog post by the same author) https://medium.com/@brianhanley/many-transgender-and-gay-people-are-dual-sex-chimeras-e042c2a0e8dd https://medium.com/@brianhanley/many-transgender-and-gay-peo...