Study that proves that Transgenderism is real (Supposedly)

submitted by Kai_Decadence from self.GenderCritical

hey there everyone. I just got another one of these articles sent to me from some TRA who pretty much told me I was wrong about my views on Transgenderism and that THIS article proves that it's a real thing.

I just got through reading it and I know deep inside that this article really didn't prove anything but I'm still new to dissecting these so called Scientific studies on the validity of Transgender ideology (he "Trans brain"). I wasn't really the best in science so it can be hard for me to read these kinds of articles and/or studies but some things did stick out to me and I thought this would be a good learning experience to identify certain inconsistencies when it comes to these readings.

Back on the old Gender Critical subreddit, I remember a woman there said that we need to be mindful of certain sources and to take anything that comes out of a "Pop Science" website with a pinch of salt. I'm not sure if "The Scientist" is considered Pop Science so I thought I'd ask here.

Also to highlight some of the red areas that really stuck out to me from this article. (This is really just meant to be an exercise to see if I can pinpoint certain red flags when it comes to these articles).

  • The examination of the brains of six "Transwomen"who were postmortem and how an area of their brain was closer to that of a woman.

My thoughts ~ They don't take into account that these people were most likely taking HRT for a long time and HRT like any other foreign substance drug can alter the brain's structure. The question I have is why don't they ever compare and contrast these so called "Trans brains" pre-HRT to women? Why does it seem to be that the only time they do this kinda thing, aside from not really having photo evidence, they never use a subject who has not had any HRT/Hormones put into them yet?

  • The abundant use of "Gender" thrown in the article.

My Thoughts ~ Once again they don't even explain what "Gender" is? What is gender? I know that they say towards the end that "Gender"/"Gender Dysphoria" is still a mystery and I 'm just left there feeling like nothing was said. If they can't define what gender is then why should we be taking these so called findings seriously because to me it feels like it explains nothing in the end.

  • My lasting thoughts/concerns. Like with most of these articles, they never really attribute and consider things like Mental Health disorders, Personality Disorders, or even the concept of Homosexuality. Shouldn't these be something to be considered when it comes to the brain and it's development?

And that's really all I've got. I'm just curious to see if I was on the right track analyzing this because I'm trying to get better at it but it's just that all the science terms can really mess with my head sometimes I must admit.

Any feedback is much appreciated!

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[–]censorshipment 24 insightful - 1 fun24 insightful - 0 fun25 insightful - 1 fun -  (15 children)

I'm just sliding in to say: TRAs are conflating dysphoria and "transgenderism". Dysphoria is real... but transgenderism is live-action roleplaying. For instance, when I was suffering from dysphoria, I roleplayed as a guy for mental relief. [slides out]

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (14 children)

Thank you for explaining. I've always been iffy on Dysphoria personally. Like I know that body dysphoria is a thing. Y'know seeing something in the mirror that really isn't there or developing image problems of your body and all that kind of stuff but "Gender Dysphoria" has always been one that perplexed me a bit but that's mostly because no one ever says what "Gender" even is at the time.

[–]MarkTwainiac 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

According to the clinical criteria stated and used by bodies such as the IDC, DSM and NHS, "gender dysphoria" means a preference for the sex stereotyped clothing, activities, interests, mannerisms and roles associated with the opposite sex and a rejection of the sex stereotypes of their own sex, along with the patient's belief or insistence that their feelings or "inner experience" matches that of the opposite sex rather than their own sex. Of course, this is all based on having rigidly stereotypical views of what it "feels like" to be male and female, and also requires believing in the questionable idea that some people somehow "just know" what it "feels like" to be the opposite sex.

The diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" requires both people with the condition and all the psychotherapists and medical professionals diagnosing and treating them to believe in and embrace very rigid and regressive sex stereotypes - that idea males should look and act one way, females an entirely different way, and there is nor should there ever be any overlap between the two. Take sex stereotypes out of the equation, and the concept of "gender dysphoria" falls apart entirely.

No dislike of one's own sex organs or physical sex characteristics is required for a clinical diagnosis of "gender dysphoria." However, some people with "gender dysphoria" do have dislike for their sex organs and physical sex characteristics. But in many cases, dislike of one's sex characteristics seems to come after the preoccupation with rigid sex stereotypes that is characteristic of "gender dysphoria," and appears to be a response to being scolded and feeling shame for liking the "wrong" clothes and having the "wrong" interests, and from being fed a diet of "born in the wrong body" and "girl brain in boy body" type malarkey.

No dislike of one's appearance or physical body in other, more generalized ways or seeing one's body in distorted ways is required for a clinical diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" either - though many people with the condition have these issues. But it's important to point out that dislike of one's appearance and body-image issues are certainly not unique to people with "gender dysphoria." At all. It's actually quite common for people to feel dislike, dissatisfaction and even disgust over what we see in the mirror - and these feelings tend to be particularly widespread, acute - overwhelming in many cases - in adolescence and early adulthood.

Feeling that something is wrong with your body or your looks does not mean something is wrong with you - it seems to be a natural, normal human response to growing up and living in the image-saturated, looking-glass world that people have increasingly come to inhabit since the invention and spread of things like glass mirrors, full-length mirrors, photography, illustrated periodicals, advertising, electric lighting, central heating - and since dressing, grooming and bathing in solitude and privacy first became common, a very recent development in history.

Most people as they grow into adulthood come to terms with the aspects of their looks they dislike or loathe and learn to live the the discomfort of such feelings - coz learning to accept that no one is perfect, entirely self-satisfied or entirely comfortable all the time is part of what maturity entails. But that doesn't mean everyone outgrows their body image issues. In fact, I'd wager that if you polled adults in nations who grew up and live with access to large, well-lit mirrors in dwellings that allow for privacy and thus enable a lot of solitary mirror-gazing, you'd find that hardly any man or woman feels entirely happy with what he or she sees in the mirror.

In teenage girls and young women, body loathing and a degree of body dysmorphia - seeing one's own body or parts of it in a distorted way that doesn't jibe with objective reality - long has been the norm, not the exception. What seems to be happening to today is that body image issues that long have been rife amongst teen girls and young women are now becoming much more extreme and entrenched. Also, so many girls and young women seem convinced that having such feelings means they are "not like other girls," whereas in the past girls and young women took it for granted that body loathing was something most other girls felt too.

Moreover, body image issues seem to becoming far more widespread amongst teen boys and young men as well - much more than in the past. Boys used to be raised to know that going through puberty causes most boys to go through a stage when they feel and look awkward, ungainly and when they think their pimply faces, smelly pits and feet, and rapidly changing, ever-hairier bodies means they are ugly and gross - but that this was just part of growing up, and they'd soon grow out of it. But nowadays, both boys and girls are coming to believe that because puberty brings about disquieting aesthetic changes to how everyone looks, as well as a host of distressing feelings, puberty should be considered a catastrophe, a disease and "torture" - and therefore children should have the "human right" to take drugs to prevent puberty from occurring.

BTW, an obvious way to ameliorate a lot of these negative feelings about our bodies would be to stop spending so much time looking in mirrors - and stop spending so much time taking, altering, poring over and publicly posting selfies too as well as looking at the filtered, photoshopped selfies and images of other people too. But it seems that's not an option most people want to undertake, or even consider. Instead, many people would prefer to focus a huge amount of time, energy and money on trying to change their appearance by using such tools as makeup, exercise, dieting, Botox, fillers, cosmetic surgeries, clothing meant to changes one's shape (push-up bras, Spanx, breast binders, etc) and prostheses (padded bras, breast forms, falsies, penis packers, gaffs, vulva panties designed to give male cross-dressers the appearance of a having pronounced "camel toes.")

At the same time, many of people who say they have "gender dysphoria" or are "trans" put an inordinate amount of energy into using filters, photoshop, special lighting, CGI-manipulation, fake mannerisms, phony voices etc to give the impression online that they look and sound very different to how they actually appear and come off IRL. The more they invest in projecting an artifice-based self-image to the world, the worse they feel about how they really look and who they really are - which encourages them to embrace and hide behind the charade of their fake personas/avatars even more, and to go to great lengths to never let anyone see or know how/who they really are.

Seems to me "gender dysphoria" could be ameliorated in similar ways. To me, the best way to help people get over this condition would be to to encourage them to critically examine the rigid sex stereotypes they cleave to, to understand why they became and are so hyper-focused on rigid sex stereotypes, and to assist them in letting go of their beliefs in rigid sex stereotypes. And to disabuse them of the notion that it's possible for anyone of one sex to "just know" what it "feels like" to be the opposite sex.

But those with "gender dysphoria" and those who diagnose and treat them seem to want to go the other way. The entire concept of "trans" and all of "gender identity" ideology requires that regressive sex stereotypes be reinforced, made more rigid and held onto ever more tightly. What's more, the trans and "gender identity" movement further demands that everyone else in the world hew to rigid, regressive sex stereotypes just as strongly as the genderists do.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Once again you made a very well written and thought-provoking post and yeah you're right that if you take away the gender stereotypes, the ideology will fall apart and perhaps even the concept of "Gender identity" because people wouldn't have to feel the need to be tied to rigid gender stereotypes. You're also right about how a good way to combat body dysphoria is to stop looking at certain images that have been manipulated to unrealistic proportions or to understand that people who do actually achieve extremes did so from unnatural means from hardcore dieting to plastic surgery. I actually see this with a few of my women coworkers who lament sometimes about how they don't feel all that attractive (I work in a gym) and they are younger than me and I always try to tell them not to hyper focus and obsess about Instagram. I even showed one of them how one of the models they were coveting was actually heavily edited in photoshop and it opened her eyes a bit.

I can only imagine how this would be for the younger generations engulfed in the gender stuff which seems to be more abundant than ever.

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Thanks, Kai. I appreciate your kind words. And am glad to know that ideas I share are of value to others. It's in the hopes that they will be of use that I bother to post. My views are considered too "TERFy" for me to get published in the press any more as I once was, but here I hope they will reach at least a few people like you who might share them with others down the line in turn.

It's interesting that you work in a gym. Does it have big mirrors all over the place so that gym users and staff are constantly confronted with their own reflections?

In case you're interested, it used to be that gyms didn't have any mirrors. Only dance studios did. If you do a google image search of "gyms in the 1950s" and "gyms in the 1960s" you can see the environments people customarily used to work out in are very different to today. So it's no wonder that anxiety over appearance and not feeling attractive is on the rise even amongst young people who are physically fit and probably quite attractive in actuality.

On personal note, I was fortunate enough to be quite attractive in my youth, and to have been raised to believe my brains and other attributes were more important than my looks, but even so as a teen girl and young woman I still often felt ugly and gross, worried that I was too fat, and basically wasted a huge amount of time and energy in my youth obsessing over my appearance and thinking that if only I could lose 10 pounds or fix this or that about my appearance, then my life would be so much better and I would be really happy, finally. Magical thinking. Most every teen girl and young woman I knew did the same thing. It's such a waste of female psychic energy and potential. Even though so many of us outgrow our preoccupation with our looks as well as a lot our dissatisfaction in time, many find it never entirely goes away - shadows linger and sometimes dormant issues crop up again.

BTW, mirrors in gyms only started to become widespread in the 1970s and especially the 80s, when a lot of dance-inspired ways of working out became common, such as jazzercize and aerobics. Places that specialized in those sorts of workouts borrowed their decor from dance studios, not from the old-school gymnasiums at YMCAs, rec centers or schools. Also, it was in the 70s that the technology for making large plate glass mirrors really improved so that sheets of mirror glass became relatively cheap - and thus after the 1970s, mirror glass began to proliferate everywhere, including on the faces of large buildings.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Well your topic contributions are vastly appreciated. To answer your question, yeah the gym I work at does have a lot mirrors and that was interesting to learn about how gyms were set up back then.

[–]kwallio 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

What you said about gyms was kind of interesting, I thought that the purpose of mirrors in gyms was to check your form. My gym is currently closed due to covid, but it only has a mirror on half of the mat area, the other have is just plain wall so I usually stick to that side.

[–]MarkTwainiac 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I thought that the purpose of mirrors in gyms was to check your form.

Used to be, people relied on spotters, instructors, coaches and workout partners to check their form. The way it's still done in old-style boxing gyms.

Similar thing used to be the case when it came to dressing, grooming and bathing. In the old days, people relied on servants such a valets or ladies maids or family members to assist them with these tasks and tell them they looked good, and they often groomed and bathed in social settings - as in communal baths and the tradition of the "reception toilet," similar to going to a beauty salon or barber shop today only it was done in people's homes.

Even after glass mirrors were invented in the Renaissance, for centuries they remained precious, extremely costly and tiny - only big enough to show the face/head, or part of it; and coz indoor lighting was dim, people mainly relied on other people to serve as their mirrors. Also, a lot of clothing - especially the clothing worn by well-off women - customarily required help getting into and lacing or buttoning up the back, so dressing alone like we often do today wasn't an option.

[–]censorshipment 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

I'd call it sex dysphoria since we either want body parts removed or altered.

[–]MarkTwainiac 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I'd call it sex dysphoria since we either want body parts removed or altered.

I think calling it "distress over natal sex" would be a better name coz "gender dysphoria" is intentionally vague. Still, it should be noted that wanting to have body parts removed or altered isn't required for a diagnosis of clinical "gender dysphoria." Nearly all the clinical criteria for the condition is about preferring the sex stereotypes of the opposite sex and believing or insisting that one "feels like" or has the inner experience of the opposite sex.

Also, the majority of people with "gender dysphoria" and who call themselves trans today do not get any surgeries or other medical intervention such as hormonal treatments to remove or alter body parts. This is especially true of males. What's more, when people with "gender dysphoria" do get body modifications, they are least likely to get primary sex characteristics removed or altered.

The most common "sex change procedures" today are double mastectomies on females and above-the waist alterations on males such as facial hair removal, facial feminization surgeries, tracheal shaves and chest implants.

Today, 95% of males who say they are trans keep their penis and testicles intact. No males today nor in the past have ever had any surgeries to remove or alter their prostates or other male internal sex organs.

By contrast, a much larger contingent of women who claim they are trans today are having their ovaries, Fallopian tubes and uteri removed - though the majority will leave their external genitals intact.

Only in females with "gender dysphoria" is removal of the defining sex organs - the gonads - common. Males with "gender dysphoria" almost always keep their gonads.

For males who take cross-sex hormones and/or testosterone blockers, most of the impact on their bodies is reversible. For females who take testosterone, most of the impact on their bodies is permanent.

Also, for the record, lots of people

either want body parts removed or altered.

In fact, if cosmetic procedures were risk- and cost-free and didn't get botched so often, I bet the majority of the population would go get parts of their bodies removed or altered. Liposuction, nose job, eye lift, hair transplant, face lift, butt lift, breast reduction or augmentation, body sculpting, brand new "chicklet" teeth - there's at least one procedure most of us would probably happily get. Coz pretty much everyone has "dysphoria" - a fancy $50 word for dissatisfaction and unease - about the way parts of our bodies look (and often function too). But only those whose unhappiness gets the label "gender dysphoria" are seen as special and put in an exalted category coz their dissatisfaction and discomfort with their bodies is seen as more important and harder to bear than anyone else's. Only those with "gender dysphoria" get their cosmetic procedures prioritized and paid for by insurance and government health care programs like the NHS. And only those with "gender dysphoria" expect and demand that in order for themselves to feel better about themselves, the entire rest of the population must now be forced to change their language, deny reality and science, erode their own boundaries, give up their own rights, and sacrifice their own personal safety, privacy, dignity and mental wellbeing - and that of their children.

[–]our_team_is_winning 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Coz pretty much everyone has "dysphoria" - a fancy $50 word for dissatisfaction and unease - about the way parts of our bodies look

Millions of us, surely, would feel more confident with a nose job or other cosmetic surgery, but we simply can't afford it. If "rhino dysphoria" were recognized, maybe health insurance would pay for it instead of deeming it cosmetic and saying you can pay the full price yourself. And a nose job or neck lift or such doesn't force others to deny reality, just like you said.

It's so wrong that insurance, including taxpayer's money, covers the outrageous claim that a man needs his jawline shaved down because he likes cute anime princesses, but a woman with a large nose, for example, who feels too insecure to assert herself in life because of it, is told that isn't covered.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Also, the NHS in the UK does not provide, nor does any private or government insurance in the US cover, breast reduction surgery in "ordinary" girls and women if it's done for appearance only. Patients must have proven, otherwise untreatable physical, functional health damage from having very large, heavy breasts to get a breast reduction paid for by the NHS and US insurance - and it usually takes years - sometimes decades - of pleading and trying various other therapies and jumping through hoops to get approved finally.

But girls and women with "gender dysphoria" who claim to be "trans" - or now increasingly "non-binary" or "masc" -can get their breasts entirely removed courtesy of the NHS and US private and government health plans. In the UK, a patient has to be 18 for double mastectomy for "gender dysphoria," but in the USA "gender dysphoric" girls as young as 13, 14 and 15 are now having their breasts removed entirely - all paid for by insurance plans. Yet as we know, girls and women with "gender dysphoria" want to get rid of their breasts so they no longer look demonstrably female - it's all about improving/changing their appearance in their own eyes and the eyes of others.

The NHS's page on treatments for gender dysphoria says:

Some people may decide to have surgery to permanently alter body parts associated with their biological sex.

Surgery for trans men

Common chest procedures for trans men (trans-masculine people) include:

removal of both breasts (bilateral mastectomy) and associated chest reconstruction nipple repositioning dermal implant and tattoo

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/

[–]our_team_is_winning 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

No doctor should be cutting off healthy body parts. Mutilation isn't healing. I had a friend as a teen who had to have breast reduction surgery. The back pain was killing her all the time. I'd say she was covered by her parents' insurance at the time (I didn't ask), but during Europe's insane "witch" hunts they would cut off women's breasts sometimes. All about humilliating and torturing women. Painful to see women with such internalized misogyny and doctors willing to induldge it.

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

during Europe's insane "witch" hunts they would cut off women's breasts sometimes.

Sadly, this didn't just happen in Europe during the period when so-called witches were hunted and persecuted. Women's breasts have also been cut off by men during various genocides and the mass-rapes committed by invading, conquering soldiers during wartime many places on earth. What the Japanese imperial soldiers did in Nanjing China in 1937 is a well-known example.

Note how the following excerpt - from Newsweek in 1997, when Newsweek was still a print magazine and a legit news source - says this is an example of humankind's cruelty when in this case it would have been far more accurate to say it's an example of men's cruelty:

The chronicle of humankind's cruelty is a long and sorry tale. But if it is true that even in such horror tales there are degrees of ruthlessness, then few atrocities can compare in intensity and scale to the rape of Nanking during World War II.

The broad details of the rape are, except among the Japanese, not in dispute. In November 1937, after their successful invasion of Shanghai, the Japanese launched a massive attack on the newly established capital of the Republic of China (Nanking back then in Anglo parlance, now Nanjing).

When the city fell on December 13, 1937, Japanese soldiers began an orgy of cruelty seldom if ever matched in world history. Tens of thousands of young men were rounded up and herded to the outer areas of the city, where they were mowed down by machine guns, used for bayonet practice, or soaked with gasoline and burned alive. By the end of the massacre an estimated 260,000 to 350,000 Chinese had been killed.

Between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women were raped --and many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls.

So brutal were the Japanese in Nanking that even the Nazis in the city were shocked. John Rabe, a German businessman who led the local Nazi party, joined other foreigners in working tirelessly to save the innocent from slaughter by creating a safety zone where some 250,000 civilians found shelter.

https://www.newsweek.com/exposing-rape-nanking-170890

[–]MezozoicGay 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Japan is still paying reparation money to Korea for what they have done with korean women during WW2.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oh okay.

[–]BiologyIsReal 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I just took a look at the article, I just wanted to tell you that this is not a scientific study but an article talking about some scientific studies. Research articles have the following format:

  • abstract: a summary of the study
  • introduction: a background of the paper's topic and the purpose of the study
  • materials and methods: what the researchers did to test their hypothesis
  • results: what they found after carrying their experiments
  • discussion: an interpretation of the results
  • references

For instance, here is one of the studies The Scientist article lists in the references, so you can see how they look like.

Anyway, even IF they were capable of proving that some men have a "feminine" brain, that doesn't mean they are women. There are some men that are shorter than many women, but that doesn't mean these men are women either. Sex is a way of classifying individuals according to their reproductive rol. Females are the ones who produce large gametes and males are the ones who produces small gametes.

Edited for clarity.

[–]FlippyKing 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I didn't click on the link because I've seen these kinds of arguments before multiple times and I don't think there is anything new that can be added to their side of the argument. The first bullet point you provide I think is enough: "The examination of the brains of six 'Transwomen' who were postmortem and how an area of their brain was closer to that of a woman." What meaning we draw from this data, assuming the data stands up and is reproducible and that anyone else looking at these six brains would see what is claimed (I doubt it actually), should be very limited. Six brains is not a lot to go on, so at best the only conclusion one could draw is the often seen "more research is needed". But, one area of their brains makes me want to look at the brains as a whole and see if there are more areas that correlate to their sex, and if those correlations are stronger than the closeness to women's brains claimed. Also, how much variation is there in women and men and in these six brains in those areas singled out by the authors?

Now, if all these hurdles are cleared, what is left? Does this constitute a new and more accurate way of figuring out who is a woman and who is a man? What makes these parts of the brain "gendered" or sexed in away that ignores chromosomes such that genitals and gamates and the manner in which the body was designed for reproduction are less accurate in saying what a man or woman is?

What does it mean to say these six transwomen are more like women in these areas of the brain? It is obviously starting with the conclusion, because you can not draw their conclusion just looking at the claims made about the data. If this were the 1950s, would a male chef's brain be more like a woman's because both are stuck in the kitchen? Or, conversely was Julia Child the first Transman because she was a chef and not 'just' cooking for the family? Musicians brains are different than non-musicians: what does that make them? All these brain arguments are weak before we deal with the elasticity of the brain.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Right and you're not wrong. But also these Transwomen like I mentioned in the post were deceased and most likely lived a life pumped full of HRT which at the end of the day is still a drug and it's been shown that drugs can affect the brain's physical structure. Why don't they ever in these studies ever use pre-HRT people and actually show photo MRI evidence of these supposed similarities?

And exactly, there are many other outside factors that formulate the brain as you explained with musicians and chefs (or even dancers and mathematicians).

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Also, I'd like to know more about the brains of the women these men's brains were compared to. Did they include post-menopausal and elderly women's brains in the comparison pool? Women who've had their ovaries removed prior to menopause and have gone decades without taking any HRT?

Fact is, TIMs who take estrogen are trying to mimic the estrogen levels of women in their peak reproductive years, not women who've passed through and are long beyond that stage. What's more, TIMs who take high level estrogen tend to continue it at the same levels in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s - until death. Whereas most women who live a full life span will spend the last 35 or more years of life with estrogen levels that are tiny or non-existent compared to what they were during the approximately 40 years between menarche and menopause, ages 11-51.

If you compared the estrogen levels of TIMs like Jenner, Pritzker and the recently deceased Morris to the estrogen levels of women their own ages, the TIMs' estrogen would be vastly higher in every case. Coz women in their late 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s don't customarily take vast quantities of estrogen the way these men do - most women of these ages nowadays take no HRT at all. Even when older women have sound medical reasons for estrogen supplementation - such as chronic UTIs, or pelvic pain due to vaginal atrophy - the health risks of longterm estrogen supplementation to women mean physicians won't prescribe estrogen to elderly women in either the doses or pill form that is customarily prescribed to TIMs of any age just for asking no matter the health risks to them. At most, an older woman nowadays will get a prescription for a very low dose topical cream for the urethra or vaginal suppositories - and then usually only for a limited time period. Double standard much?

[–]FlippyKing 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Your point about their artificial hormone levels is an excellent point, definitely not one I thought about till I read yours. If I had included it in what I typed it would remind me too much of this: https://youtu.be/_CO0H70tATE?t=215 (an attempt by these two violinists to show how a lot of the work of female composers ended up in the catalogs of male composers)

Musicians are supposed to have very different, and recognizable, brain structures. But, that is from training and due to the brain's elasticity and no one is born that way. My idea about chefs is just reflecting on that cooking is a behavior and not innate.

I think we know why they don't do any good, real, studies: it's all BS. The humanities should have called out Butler on all her BS long ago, the I suspect most in those fields feared "there, but by the grace of God, go I."

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

If you believe that the brain and body are distinct from one another, you are wrong. It doesn't matter if a brain shows up as "feminine" (bullshit, maybe a few parts) by contemporary measures, the rest of the man's body--with its nerves, hormones, neurotransmitters, fetal hormone exposure, plus the Y chromosome in every cell--isn't.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I agree. This whole "feminine" brain thing is just asinine because even if it was true, it doesn't change the fact that their chromosomal makeup is male.

[–]kwallio 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I didn't read the article. But I would say that a post mortem study of a very small number of people doesn't prove much. Also, I would say that brains are plastic and changeable - there was a study of cab drivers that showed they all had changes in the brains in the area of spatial memory. To me any study that looks at brains is sort of a side show, a person in a male body can't be a woman no matter what the brain looks like. I kind of doubt that a brain scan can differentiate with any accuracy between a pre-everything transwoman, post-transition trans woman, heterosexual woman, gay men, pre-everything trans men, lesbian women, etc. These studies of trans women after they've transitioned are sort of reasoning backwards - they're trying to find a difference in a group thats already been identified. This is not normally how science is done.

Then there is the issue with the idea that no one needs to transition in order to be considered trans. Why are they looking at transwomen who have transitioned? Isn't that ~transphobic? None of the trans rhetoric makes any kind of damn sense, you're just supposed to accept whatever BS gets thrown out uncritically.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

This is like saying if someone is depressed and suicidal that means they really truly were never meant to be born. Makes no sense.

I've also read that story on the 6 transwomen and first of all, any conclusions drawn from observing 6 individuals is not a scientific study. That's an anecdote. Second, you're absolutely right that any study done on an adult trans person taking HRT are going to be skewed by the effects of hormones and neural plasticity due to a person's environment.

The article even says that the results are 'mixed' when it comes to any conclusions regarding trans brains.

“What we found is that, in several regions, cis women, male-to-female trans, and female-to-male trans have thicker cortex than cis males, but not in the same regions.”

This basically says absolutely nothing about trans people having truly opposite sexed brains. If they did, they'd see the same (or similar) patterns in the same (or similar) regions of the brain between women and transwomen, likewise with men and transmen. Also I'd be willing to bet if they took a decent number of 'cis' people and looked at their brains they'd find the same types of discrepancies. Because brains aren't 100% male or 100% female.

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

Yeah, and if there really were clear-cut, consistent differences in male and female brains across the board (seen in all ages, races, ethnicities, countries, localities, cultures and so on) wouldn't there already be tons and tons of studies showing and replicating this? After all, autopsies and brain dissections aren't exactly new. And men have been alleging and trying to make the case that male brains are inherently different to and superior to female ones for millennia.

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

The brain is a mosiac of traits, societal conditioning cements the dominant traits. All his article does is prove that some males who transition condition themselves into performing feminity, which we all already knew. This does not in any way prove that neurology has a sex which is innate

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

This argument has never made sense to me. EVEN IF there could be some kind of definitive way to show female vs male brains, and then some way to show that this group of males actually had female brains, that wouldn't prove to me that they were actually women, it would prove to me that their original thesis was false, and that actually some men do have what they were calling female brains after all. It's a miscategorization. Men and women are categories based on sexual reproductive systems.

If there is a significant brain difference in humans that is worth studying, and all women show it but the only men shown to have it are body-dysmorphic? or dress according to female stereotype? or have taken hormones? - or, whatever the scientific commonality of "being trans" is considered to be - then perhaps there is some knowledge to be gained about that part of the brain, but it won't change the nature of male and female.

Nonetheless at this point I am sure no TRA would actually want that level of scientific precision, since everything is by self-ID, so if a brain scan would be able to tell you "actually you are not trans" that would be unacceptable. So it feels very much like a have your cake & eat it too scenario