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[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

barring disease or musculoskeletal disorders, she'd have proprioceptor sensitivity (and density maybe, to an extent) relative to her bone length, joint size, and anti-gravity muscle function. This would be hardwired to her brain and inform her senses of balance, range of motion, and position in space (in averaged terms) more in line with what men of her height experience.

Thinking more about this, I'd wager that men and women of the same exact height would always have different perceptions of their bodies & themselves based on the measures you mention.

Since men and women have a different center of gravity, wouldn't we have a different sense of balance too? https://youtu.be/_YEmYqziusg https://youtu.be/sZbrVxcvIyE

Not only do we have a different range of motion in certain body parts - the hips & pelvis especially but also the legs and feet - but the female & male thigh bones are angled differently, & thus relate to the knees differently, which causes the two sexes to walk, run, jump, kick, move in water, pedal a bike, ski and so on differently - and to have different rates of lower limb injuries too.

Also, wouldn't males and females have somewhat different anti-gravity muscle function coz of the difference in the amount of overall muscle each sex has, women's generally greater natural elasticity & flexibility, and the impact of the menstrual cycle on women's core muscles, ligaments & other connective tissues?

When comparing the perceptions of self & the world of males & females of the same height in an effort to figure out if being of the same height really would mean having similar or the same perceptions of self & the world as was proposed earlier on this thread, pregnancy would have to be factored in too. After all, 85% of the world's women will have at least one child - many will have several, and some will have a whole bunch. Over the course of pregnancy, women's balance, range of motion, position in space, center of gravity, spine curvature, amount of pelvic tilt, gait pattern all change enormously so our sense of these things has to change too. And certainly, our awareness of the amount of space we take up horizontally is radically altered, and that's something we always have to be aware of - or if for a moment we forget, we get reminded of it when we try to fit our big bellies behind the steering wheel of an auto, into a booth in a restaurant or inside a cramped stall shower.

Now pregnancy is a relatively short-term experience in life, but it is one of those experiences that really does tend to alter women's perceptions of our bodies as well as of the world and our place in it.

(Tangent: This got me thinking about the impact of a woman's height on pregnancy & her perceptions of her body during pregnancy. It's been proven that the taller a woman is, the more likely that her pregnancy will go full-term or past-term, the less likely she will have a premature labor & birth, and the less likely she will have labor & birth complications resulting in the need for an emergency C-section as well as such adverse outcomes as stillbirth, a baby with low birth weight and/or low APGAR scores, and her own death in labor or in the post-partum period. From what women report, there's also evidence that taller women are less likely less likely to experience pregnancy-related chronic heartburn, constipation, urinary incontinence, piles and lower backache. But I've never come across any literature about whether a woman's height has any measurable impact on the mechanics of her pregnant body in terms of balance, range of motion, center of gravity, changes in gait and so on - and whether that, in turn, might cause her to experience her pregnant body in the way a woman of a different height would.)

Back to the matter of height alone, another difference between males & females of the same height is that girls develop breasts at 10-12, and many girls' & women's breasts are quite large. The size of girls' & women's breasts definitely affect our sense of balance, range of motion & our perceptions of our bodies - and other people's perceptions of us & our bodies too. As soon as girls start developing breasts, the world becomes a minefield in which being catcalled, perved on, groped, hit on & treated like a piece of meat by boys & men are part of our everyday experience as we make our way in the world. Trans-identified males who go on PBs & CSH early might experience this. But those who adopt a trans identity later in life won't.

I know slight, pretty boys, androgynous boys and young gay male "twinks" get sexually preyed upon & harassed by boys & men too. But not to the extent that girls do. Coz compared to the proportion of the male populace who are sexually attracted to females, the number of boys & men who are sexually attracted to males is much smaller.

Of course, with CSH, many males who identify as trans in adulthood develop breasts, but usually their breasts are not nearly as large as female breasts often naturally are. Nor would their breasts have the same characteristics, coz being female & going through female puberty is necessary to develop all the milk glands, ducts & lobes that women have. (If Jazz Jennings' tubular breasts are any indication, the breasts of males put on PBs at 10 & CSHs at 11 might differ from female breasts in significant ways.) Similarly, whilst many trans-identified adult males have augmentation surgeries so as to obtain what appear to be quite large breasts, there's a world of difference between how it feels to have female breasts grown naturally since the start of female puberty and having silicone sacs of fluid or gel surgically attached in adulthood. Moreover, when augmentation surgeries are done on males, the silicone sacs are attached to a torso with male shoulders and male chest muscles.

Women who've had breast reconstruction following mastectomies for cancer report that they experience their new surgically-constructed breasts very differently to their original, natural breasts. So I don't see how a male person who gets a factory-made breast facsimiles would have any idea what it's like to have genuine female breasts.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352587815000522

But I've strayed far afield, LOL. Sorry!

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Now pregnancy is a relatively short-term experience in life, but it is one of those experiences that really does tend to alter women's perceptions of our bodies as well as of the world and our place in it.

Just using this as a jumping-off point -- it completely alters perception. You alluded to relaxin, and that fluctuates with the menstrual cycle as well as its big role in pregnancy and childbirth -- and frankly, parts (pubic symphysis, SI joints, the rectus abdominis in diastasis) don't always go back into place . . . if ligaments go into any degree of sprain, even in the knees, for instance, for adjusting to balance a pregnant belly, it may damage or up/down-regulate the proprioceptors around the joint in a way that won't fully reset, so post-partum balance, gait, ROM, etc. may be very different from pre-pregnancy.

That really surprises me about tall women and pregnancy -- I would have guessed the opposite, since connective tissue diseases seem to correlate with height (no data, just an observation). You see it more in self-selected populations like professional dancers and basketball players -- I don't know if they've looked at female leagues, but male basketball players have a high incidence of arrhythmias that commonly feature in valvular disease, which is very common in connective tissue disorders. Clearly something else is going on with height that's advantageous for birth. Huh.

I'm a woman and as tall as the average man in North America, so I do get the "taking up vertical space" and having eye-level interaction aspects of what it may be like in a man's body of comparable height, and I'll own I've used that to hold my ground with men in assertive-but-nonviolent situations before (education and work in male-dominated environments). It has been useful. But all the intrinsic details -- relaxin, pelvic shape, Q-angles, lower numbers of fibers per muscle -- those are uniquely female, and I don't see how they could be "imagined."

And yes to the sexed differences in balance, gait, ROM, center of gravity, those are all in play. Growing breasts is a game-changer. Not just the weight, but the forward flexion, the self-conscious "curling inward" so many girls do because of all the factors you mentioned -- if that persists, it can chronically stress the mid-back, C-spine, TMJs, provoke migraines and autonomic dysregulation and all sorts of unpleasantness. It's basically a postural "startle response" that becomes a lived-in body position, and, well . . . it's sadly self-explanatory, isn't it?

I've seen some really sketchy (non-SRS) surgical outcomes and postsurgical chronic pain conditions -- probably in the hundreds by now. Including women with purely cosmetic breast implants. I'm shocked at how casually reassignment procedures are treated by transtrenders. I had major invasive surgery myself, and though it went brilliantly, it took years to regain my ROM and re-adjust to the postsurgical new-normal. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, and I've seen much, much worse.

No worries for the straying. I could endlessly nerd out about A&P and neurology!