Quote from: androgynouspainter26 on January 04, 2015, 11:07:21 PM
Nonsense, Asami! I welcome the discourse-you seem like one of the rare people in the world with a well-formed opinion on this, and it's good to discuss this with someone on an intelectual level.
I don't think it's an absolute priory expectation of our morphologies-just a vague guideline for what parts to expect where. We are innately predisposed to recognize faces, and even to find harmony in the proportions of the human boy (for example, hellenic architecture) Consider the phantom limb phenomenon...remove someone's leg, and they are going to be convinced that it is still there, because their brain, both through biology and adaptive learning expects a leg to be there. An even stranger thing happens when the opposite happens; I'm under the impression that for some ridiculous reason, discussing BIID, but you understand where I'm going. I think this must be the result of a brain that has been femimisned in vitro and therefore expects a female anatomy. Anything relating to feminine behavior from the person is just a symptom.
It doesn't fully make sense to me even now, but I simply cannot come up with any other explanation for why I hate my genetalia, and why I hated them before I had any idea what part was considered "normal" for boys and for girls. What is your theory on the matter?
What's your thought on this?
And Stephaniec, I must disagree---I don't believe dysphoria can suddenly become activated. It's simply something that some people are able to repress for longer than others.
I'm not suggesting a blank slate, more of a vague slate. The plasticity of the brain is interesting, especially in relation to the body as a whole. If half of your brain just died right now, you wouldn't even notice. You'd lose the sight and hearing, and mobility of one side of your body, plus a layer of cross-lateral redundant processing, but wouldn't even notice. If however you lost an eye, or had organ failures, you'd notice, because the corresponding areas of the brain would be expecting to process information that it isn't receiving.
The plasticity of the brain explains phantom limbs, when you lose a limb, the area of your brain that controls the other limb will begin to recruit the perfectly functional area of brain for the other limb, which causes a morphing of the two, kind of like synesthesia. The disorder is also often accompanied by pain, because if I were to squeeze my hand until my nails started to cut me, then a feedback loop would prevent me from applying much more pressure -- but people with phantom limbs often have this sensation, but can't stop it. So they designed a little mirror box that flips the appearance of your chirality, so that unclasping that hand fools you into believing that the you have unclasped the missing hand, stopping the pain.
Lacan a psychotherapist identified the development of our body images with what he calls the "mirror" phase, in which we are constantly reinforced that the image we see in reflections is ourselves -- and self-awareness tests are seeing if animals can identify themselves in a mirror. If their body images were innate, they ought to be able to do that, and it not be an indication of a posteriori self-knowledge.
