Susan's Place Transgender Resources

My brain tends to the right.
And I know that most males drive on the left side and most females on the right, stereotypically speaking, of course.

So, what about you - do you drive on the left or the right? And does it match the stereotype of your gender id?

Mine matches. I tend toward right-brained abilities. Always have. Never much anlyticall, big-picture rather than detail oriented, nurture over power, communion rather than agency. So it goes.

The book I finished reading a few weeks ago theorizes that as our culture becomes more 'imagistic' we will all tend toward valuing the traditional 'feminine styles' over the currently declining masculine. He maintains the difference is in the linearity required by script decoding and the non-linearity required for image decoding.

Called The Alphabet and the Goddess. It was an interesting and good read, by a medical doctor no less.

N~

    I'm a right brainer I think.  I remember a test someone posted and I was all about the side most commonly associated with the feminine. 
    My gender identity is too weird to be imagined.  It hurts when I try to feel it these days.

Remember that turning woman image?  That was the test.



what is script decoding?

Dont know this..how do you test it?

I found this quiz:

http://www.lifescript.com/quiz/quiz.asp?bid=46621 (http://www.lifescript.com/quiz/quiz.asp?bid=46621)

I'm right brain for sure, here is the list of traits it lists:

Right Brain Traits

   1. When given a task or assignment, you want to know why it's important because you like the big picture.
   2. You don't need to do lists you like to wing it!
   3. You prefer molding clay into pottery over Sudoku puzzles because it is more creative.
   4. When shopping for a new car, you pick what looks best, rather than what drives best because you are into aesthetics.
   5. When traveling, you like to impulsive adventure. Why plan it all out and ruin it?
   6. Because you are visual, you prefer textbooks to lectures.
   7. You can remember a person's face but not necessarily his name.
   8. Your office is not necessarily organized, but you find what you need, eventually.
   9. When trying a new software program, you install it and immediately begin experimenting with it.
  10. You aren't always on time, but you mean well.

I did the quiz

It's a tie. You are right down the middle!

Talk about having the best of both worlds! You are a person who shares both right brain and left brain abilities and uses both of them in everyday decisions. It would benefit you to read the results for both right and left brainers so that you can better understand the attributes you share with each of them. Congratulate your brain for wanting to do it both ways!


More indications I am a TG  ;D

I also took the quiz and got right in the middle. I kind of knew that as I do like some analytical things and yet I like the aesthetics of things too. I'm very punctual but I don't run on an agenda. When I read the traits of both right and left, I saw what I do in both. I guess I'm sort of AC/DC, go both ways.
Sheila

Rebis: script decoding is what you do when you read. It's what I do as well. An alphabetic mind is left-brained, rod-dominant and right-handed. (rod dominant not 'cone' dominant as rods and cones provide different emphases to the way we see things.)

All people have those possibilities, the fullrange. For some of us one side tends to be dominant, although we are generally capable of learning the other way as well.

Current thinking shows that the way boys are trained tends to make 80% of males left-brained and the way girls are socialized makes us 80% right-brained.

A lot of this has to do with personal preference.

The dichotomy between 'masculine-left' and 'feminine-right' shows a cultural prejudice. The right-side brain doesn't necessarily dominate in females. Culturally women tend toward those aspects more so than guys.

The book I read associates linearity with the rise of sky-gods and male dominance in cultures, the triumph of a 'hunter-killer' possibility in the brain that is generally more associated with 'masculine' in contrast to an 'abstract, field-encompassing, relational and nurturing, gathering, feminine' bias.

Historically, men have tended to be the predominant hunters and women the predominant gatherers because of the role child-bearing has played in our evolution.

There doesn't seem to be anything intrinsic that causes the 'split.' Women can hunt and make war quite well, evidently, if there is anything to the 'Amazon/Penthesilia' aspect of the Iliad. And men have shown themselves to be very capable 'nurturers.'

The 'split' in the book is one of convenience that also explains why goddesses were relegated in 'literate' cultures while they tend toward dominance in 'imagistic' cultures. He tracks that through history, from Sinaitic Judaism, through early Xtianity and Protestant reformers to Enlightenment hisotry and industrial revolution right into todays current bend back toward the imagistic due to the computer generation and television and motion pictures. We communicate more through sight than we have in three thousand years.

It's a brain thing, not a gender thing.

Nichole

Did some looking in to this and some interesting links.

Here is the dancer article.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html

A online test
http://www.web-us.com/brain/braindominance.htm


http://members.shaw.ca/hidden-talents/brain/116-sexes.html

I thought this might be useful

Anna

Quote from: Nichole on February 13, 2008, 11:28:05 AM
Mine matches. I tend toward right-brained abilities. Always have. Never much anlyticall, big-picture rather than detail oriented, nurture over power, communion rather than agency. So it goes.

The book I finished reading a few weeks ago theorizes that as our culture becomes more 'imagistic' we will all tend toward valuing the traditional 'feminine styles' over the currently declining masculine. He maintains the difference is in the linearity required by script decoding and the non-linearity required for image decoding.

Called The Alphabet and the Goddess. It was an interesting and good read, by a medical doctor no less.

N~

1. Near the start of the book, he says he is going to survey the available explanations for the historical developments he traces, and show why his theory is the one that explains the historical facts the best. He doesn't do this. His general approach is to show how some "bad" development followed immediately on the introduction of an alphabetic form of writing, or the printing press, or an increase in literacy. Although he says that he understands the difference between correlation and causality, in the end, he mostly presents correlations in time.

2. Along the same lines, he fails to provide any cogent analysis of what is wrong with competing theories for the rising dominance of men in Western society (he mentions the horticulture-to-agriculture shift theory, but simply dismisses it without explaining why this explanation is wrong or incomplete).

3. He takes odd little detours. I never did figure out what the chapter on Ganymede and Sappho had to do with his thesis.

4. By the end of the book, the chapters became tediously repetitious. Basically, each one consisted of a description of some heinous development in Western culture, the establishment of some time-based correlation between this development and an increase in literacy, followed by the assertion that this was further proof that alphabets cause horrible problems.

5. His entire premise relies on the equation of left brain with masculine (and thus with males), versus the right brain with feminine (and thus with females). He fails to distinguish between the social constructs of masculine/feminine and biological sex. He ignores all the studies which show that the differences within each sex (on this masculine/feminine scale) are far greater than between the sexes.

6. Whenever he encounters a woman who thrives in a "masculine" environment, he adduces this as evidence of that particular woman being co-opted by the over-emphasis on the left brain. He never seems to question the degree to which his thesis is affected by the culture in which he is located -- to what degree can he universalize a theory tied so deeply to a particular notion of masculine and feminine that come so cleary from the time and place in which he lives.

Interestingly, Shalin seems to recognize the irony of his entire project (using alphabet-based writing and logical thinking to debunk the same...). Therefore, he occasionally makes a point of saying that alphabets aren't *all* bad. It's just that whenever there's an increase in alphabetic literacy, then there is a corresponding social disruption.

In the end I found the book to be based on an interesting idea, but altoghter too dogmatic in expounding the idea. And this dogmatism makes the argument ultimately unpersuasive to me.

QuoteYou responded as a right brained person to 11 questions, and you responded as a left brained person to 7questions. According to the Hemispheric Dominance test, you use your right brain the most.

Hmmm. . . I always thought I was left brained. . .

*facepalm* I read some of that and didnt really understood it  ;D

EDIT: Responding to lisagurl

That's a very interesting conclusion, Lisa, given your own dogmatism in some areas of thinking. ;)

BTW, he also points out that after the 'initial overload' caused by linearity that cultures calm down and goddesses/mothers revive and the deadly hunts for witches, iconic pics, etc recede and ameliorate the iniital 'reigns of terror.'

I found the book an enjoyable read and historically it does appear to hold 'true to some degree.' I imagine that most 'universally defining theories' have difficulties with application to life, the universe and everything.

TRUTH appears to be incomprehensible to single individuals, I suspect simply because our abilities to comprehend 'everything' is non-existent.

Nichole
N~

I did another one of the tests mentioned...this time I was right-brained

Honestly, I use both, not just equally but at the same time. I'm a linguistic, analytical person but my subconsciousness and right creative, imagistic brain overlap the left. I don't think in linear patterns but make greater logical leaps than people who do. I'm disorganized, spontaneous, but pathologically obsessed with punctuality and even when you can't see the carpet in my room, I know exactly where everything is. I never forget names or faces.

Yeah. *shrug* I think that left-brain/right-brain dichotomies are bogus.

Ouch, my head suddenly hurts  :-\

I'm definitely right-brained.  I'm left handed and am told often that I'm a stereotypical left-hander down to the core.  But...

As for the right-brained/left-brained differences and quizzes, I always find them curious because in a lot of ways when you look at things like tests and quizzes, they test how much a naturally "left-brained/right-handed" person tends to use their "right-brain."  Things everywhere including IQ tests I think are extraordinarily biased towards right-brained/left-handed thought processes.  I have been measured invariably in the "genius" IQ range, but for certain if the test were biased the opposite direction (towards testing left-brained/right-handed abilities) I'm sure I'd be judged below-average.

So maybe I'm thinking this one out just a bit too much, but if it were up to me, I'd have to be more inclined to say that if this were true (regarding right/left brained gender bias) that there would be an abnormal number of left-handed MTF transgendered people and right-handed FTM, since that would be about the only baseline that could be measured.  However, from what I've read,, both MTF and FTM tend to have a disproportionate number of left-handed people to right-handed people, compared to what should be statistically the norm.  My personal guess is that most transgenders would tend towards the "thinking outside of the box" mentality that comes with being "right-brained" or "towards the middle," which comes with an ability to be able to reject socially defined gender types to begin with.

-Kit

P.S. This post had an insufficient number of DK smileys... :)

Quote from: Nero on February 13, 2008, 08:24:45 AM
My brain tends to the right.
And I know that most males drive on the left side and most females on the right, stereotypically speaking, of course.

So, what about you - do you drive on the left or the right? And does it match the stereotype of your gender id?

I've no idea at all.......I'm left handed but play guitar right handed. How are we supposed to know the answer to your bizarre question nero? do I go and get a brain scan?

Quote from: Rebis on February 13, 2008, 11:58:47 AM

what is script decoding?

well rebis script decoding reverse of script codeing. it when some one gives you a program  that has been

writen in script codeing. and the person that is trying to write the script in the frist place has a problem

with it . so they give it to some one who knows how write scripting programs in  cc+ or cc+ basic as well

as in it goes the same too for java script writeing. and that person then goes back and looks for the

problem . and then fixes it for the frist person . hope i did not get you too mixed up there rebis  ;D

Hi Deb,

   I get it now.  My brain can decode a script then.  Even though I don't do it often, sometimes I tear apart someone else's scripting and write it in a more simple way.  I just didn't realize that there was a name for it.

  I work with computers and networks, but I tend to work intuitively and I don't know how to explain myself or understand others when they get technical.
 
  You must be in the tech biz too.


Rebis

Quote from: Rebis on February 13, 2008, 08:25:55 PM
Hi Deb,

   I get it now.  My brain can decode a script then.  Even though I don't do it often, sometimes I tear apart someone else's scripting and write it in a more simple way.  I just didn't realize that there was a name for it.

  I work with computers and networks, but I tend to work intuitively and I don't know how to explain myself or understand others when they get technical.
 
  You must be in the tech biz too.


Rebis

hiyea rebis  :) ahh i see  that is great you can do that .  :) and well no but i have  done some script

writeing,s  and codeing and forum codeing .and made a few forums . the hard part  have found is trying to

write script out in long hand which i did it with coffe cup basic . and made a web page . god that took a

while . just wished microsoft had not giveing up on frontpage  tho . god i loved that program  sigh ::)

plus a few codeing  programs for the fun of it  :)

Microsoft replaced Frontpage with Impression web and other variations.  It's not as easy, although I'm getting used to it.  It's more serious about CSS than HTML

Quote from: Rebis on February 13, 2008, 09:25:38 PM

Microsoft replaced Frontpage with Impression web and other variations.  It's not as easy, although I'm getting used to it.  It's more serious about CSS than HTML

indeed it is more about css then htmls. and yea i know that hurt me when they did that too. also too

i forgot and  this part  whats really fun and lot of work is  php basic  and php NUKED mixed with

xml  and flash and java and html . oh god what a joy that is to deal with all at one time  eh?????

I haven't done anything with PHP or flash.  I keep everything simple simple simple.  Usually, if I have time, I'll mess with something different. 

Most of my web stuff is just personal, so I don't have to please anybody.

Quote from: Rebis on February 13, 2008, 09:34:07 PM
I haven't done anything with PHP or flash.  I keep everything simple simple simple.  Usually, if I have time, I'll mess with something different. 

Most of my web stuff is just personal, so I don't have to please anybody.

same here too rebis  but i can say with php basic and php nuked. and xml with the flash and java and html

looks really great . when it is done right but it takes a long time to get it right if you have never done it

before god what a trip that is  :o :o :o. god i remember my frist php site i had a long time ago. sigh.

This is what I found on a site called "viewzone.com"... and I'd have to say I match the right brained perspective more...

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS (I have '30.04%' of these traits) uses logic detail oriented facts rule words and language present and past math and science can comprehend knowing acknowledges order/pattern perception knows object name reality based forms strategies practical safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS (I have '86.71%' of these traits) uses feeling "big picture" oriented imagination rules symbols and images present and future philosophy & religion can "get it" attitude believes appreciates spatial perception knows object function fantasy based presents possibilities impetuous risk taking

Green = Traits that I DO display (6.67%) | Red = Traits that I don't display (0%) | Purple = Traits that I KINDA display (3.34%)

So from what I've done with that list up there you can clearly see that I'm more right brained then I am left brained. ;)

Oh BTW I figured that out but taking the number of traits on that list (which was 15 on both) and I divided 100 by that number and got "6.67%" for the traits that were green and "3.34%" for the traits that were purple and of course 0 for the traits that were red then I calculated (literally) the traits that were green and purple and that is how I came up with my percentage. ;)

Quote from: Krista on February 13, 2008, 10:21:01 PM
This is what I found on a site called "viewzone.com"... and I'd have to say I match the right brained perspective more...

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS (I have '30.04%' of these traits) uses logic detail oriented facts rule words and language present and past math and science can comprehend knowing acknowledges order/pattern perception knows object name reality based forms strategies practical safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS (I have '86.71%' of these traits) uses feeling "big picture" oriented imagination rules symbols and images present and future philosophy & religion can "get it" attitude believes appreciates spatial perception knows object function fantasy based presents possibilities impetuous risk taking

Hmmm - well I've all the right brain things except 'spatial perception' and 'object function' (but I blame that on my extremely poor coordination).
But 'words and language' are my soul, and am 'detail oriented', very much so, and 'acknowledging' and 'knowing', so...
Now you've just confused the hell out of me, Krista. :laugh:

Quote from: Nero on February 13, 2008, 11:15:54 PM

Quote from: Krista on February 13, 2008, 10:21:01 PM
This is what I found on a site called "viewzone.com"... and I'd have to say I match the right brained perspective more...

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS (I have '30.04%' of these traits) uses logic detail oriented facts rule words and language present and past math and science can comprehend knowing acknowledges order/pattern perception knows object name reality based forms strategies practical safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS (I have '86.71%' of these traits) uses feeling "big picture" oriented imagination rules symbols and images present and future philosophy & religion can "get it" attitude believes appreciates spatial perception knows object function fantasy based presents possibilities impetuous risk taking

Hmmm - well I've all the right brain things except 'spatial perception' and 'object function' (but I blame that on my extremely poor coordination).
But 'words and language' are my soul, and am 'detail oriented', very much so, and 'acknowledging' and 'knowing', so...
Now you've just confused the hell out of me, Krista. :laugh:

Lol, sorry Nero, I tend to do that... a lot. :D

(I suck with coding and its a bit much with all the color-coding in your post, so I'll do it manually for me).

Bold are traits I do have. Underlined are traits I kinda have.

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS

    * uses logic
    * detail oriented
    * facts rule
    * words and language
    * present and past
    * math and science
    * can comprehend
    * knowing
    * acknowledges
    * order/pattern perception
    * knows object name
    * reality based
    * forms strategies
    * practical
    * safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS

    * uses feeling
    * "big picture" oriented
    * imagination rules
    * symbols and images
    * present and future
    * philosophy & religion
    * can "get it" attitude
    * believes
    * appreciates
    * spatial perception
    * knows object function
    * fantasy based
    * presents possibilities
    * impetuous
    * risk taking

The first test said I was right-brained, but I'm probably both. I'm ambidextrous, although I use my left hand for writing I do many things with both hands, like I can apply mascara with both hands (each in their turn, not at once) no problem for example :P