I've been an avid listener of the Paranormal Podcast for the past 2 years and sometimes the host has guests on the show who are doctors and scientists conducing research on the fringes of "acceptable" theory. And though nobody ever goes into the subject of gender (unless Jim happens to be interviewing a tantric magician or somesuch ;P), sometimes I can't help but wonder why some of this stuff hasn't been tested out with trans* people.

Just today I was listening to a journalist talking about a book he'd written about a neuroscientist from years ago working with OCD patients who were seeking ways to cope with their anxieties without medication and without giving into the compulsions. The answer lay with the concept of neuroplasticity ("mind over matter"-style meditation, specifically) for a number of them, and worked with great success. Long story short, I was reminded that neuroplasticity exists, so I did a little digging and discovered a few very interesting studies regarding phantom limb syndrome on wikipedia, all of them concluding that it is possible for amputees who experience the syndrome are capable of "moving" their phantom limbs in otherwise impossible ways, or even imagining them differently than they actually were prior to amputation.

To carry these over to the concepts of "brain sex" and gender dysphoria... I think studies like these imply that there is a lot more going on to the human experience of gender and gendered bodies than what is currently accepted. It's just so weird to be told by a binary person that the very idea of my existence as a nonbinary person threatens their trans* identity. Well... it's not my fault that their entire concept of self relies on the primacy of a flawed system that has very little in the way of empirically definitive evidence for its existence! Arguing that the brain is static and fixed is an antiquated notion that does no justice to how amazingly adaptive and complex we really are. But I guess flexibility and complexity are scary things, especially for people who spend years of their life and thousands of dollars to achieve the goal of fitting into a different category than the one they came from. Which is fine and understandable and all that, but... I wish they'd stop "adding epicycles", as it were. ;P

Anyways, I think the phantom limb research is amazing, and if binary gendered people are known to experience similar with genitals and SSCs (I'm tired of typing out 'secondary sex characteristics'), then this opens the door to the possibility for nonbinaries/genderqueers to experience phantom limb sensations in body parts and genitals that may be otherwise physically impossible. ("The thing you want doesn't exist" seems to be an oft-cited reason for binaries to pretend we're just delusional.)

Discuss!

Anyone else have any other less commonly known or shared scientific evidence that leaves the door open for us to ask "what if..?"?

Kinda ironic that trans people think in the most binary terms of all, huh?

Quote from: Ativan Prescribed on October 16, 2013, 10:53:25 PM
I am still working with PHS at the U
http://www.phs.umn.edu/facstaff/home.html
I work with one of their psychologists for myself, but their program is also for helping people like me.
If you look at the credentials of the WPATH Standards of Care, you'll see Dr Walter Bockting's name come up a few times.
The staff at PHS is pretty heavily involved with the SOC. Cross reference some of the contributors.
I also work with one of their medical Drs for my HRT. It's ongoing information gathering and they churn out a lot of information in their respective fields to colleagues who also are working on and with Non-Binary people.
Questions pertaining to the SOC came up quite often with Walter when he was my Psychologist and I know my medical Dr is asking questions that pertain to it.
The Psychologist I work with now is difficult for me to wrap my head around, but is a life saver, none the less.
He has a specialty that I'm just starting to get to know. I just might be a lab rat.
So I get to be a little involved on the side with what they have and are accomplishing.
There are a lot of studies and such going on, but releasing it to the general public is slow in coming.
I know there are some pretty knowledgeable people out there working on our behalf.
I work with them, as they in turn put up with me, lol.
I trust that they look at any and all information of value for us.
I see good things ahead for all *Trans, but I especially am looking forward to unique Non-Binary things to happen.
The scientific community is aware and working on things for us all. Society, not so much. Scientists, yep.
Ativan

Very cool! I wish I could be a guinea pig sometimes. I feel like I would do a lot more good talking to a doctor who's taking notes than trying to change minds in places like this.

Quote from: Pickles on October 18, 2013, 12:01:09 PM
Kinda ironic that trans people think in the most binary terms of all, huh?

It's to be expected. It's like the villain character in a movie whose motivation for the entire story has been to exact revenge on the hero for killing his father a long time ago or something. Only to find out, during the climactic fight, that the father had been killed by someone else. You think the villain would take that realization and just go "Oh, sorry then. Wanna go for drinks instead?" No, the villain is going to believe in the lie even more because it justifies his desire for revenge, and the revenge has been the only thing he's lived for. He's going to get madder and more frustrated with the hero for daring to confuse the narrative he's built up in his head and probably want to kill him even more for telling him that his belief all these years was wrong.

I mean, the first two stages of grief are denial and anger. If a binary trans* person exhibits those behaviors when you tell them that genderqueer/nonbinary identities are valid and real, then that means they are reacting to something threatening, that something they hold dear and is part of their identity is in jeopardy and could be lost if the statement is indeed acknowledged as true.

Im pretty impressed on the whole phantome limps.

I dont feel so much dyshoria or felling in my everyday life but in dreams I can feel alot, everything from taste to heath or if anything hurt or is pleasent. It very real, and I also had dreams where I got a penis and could feel that 100% even when I dont have one IRL. so its pretty amazing what our brains can do.

I didn't even catch that other link, Ativan... even though it's the term for what I was trying to describe from the full phantom limb article. Fascinating!!

I've described myself as having something of a "phantom body" before, but I realize now that the term for it is body integrity identity disorder. It's not that I want parts that aren't there, I actually feel like I have more parts than I should and more mass than I should. I want things taken away rather than added.

I'm going to do more research on BIID...

BIID has apparently been renamed to 'xenomelia' in the last few years, which now acknowledges the existence of a spectrum. Here's a quick article about it: http://about-brains.com/when-the-brain-refuses-ownership-of-a-limb/

I can relate to the feeling of being "over-complete" as one subject says, though it's with both my gendered anatomy and with the rest of my body as a whole (and as such, not gender-related, nor does it feel gender-related in any way). But I am coming to the conclusion that I might feel something like this in regards to my genitalia and SSCs with specific relevance to my genderlessness.

Quote from: Ativan Prescribed on October 16, 2013, 10:53:25 PM
The scientific community is aware and working on things for us all. Society, not so much. Scientists, yep.
Ativan

scientists have the ability to see us as the exception that (possibly) proves the rule. the human mind isn't too easy to study, but scientists keep trying to analyze it properly. whenever an exception is observed, it needs to be examined, or the research would be too incomplete. it's a bit like how this linguist from new york came to this area and was fascinated by a language that does things which modern linguistics say shouldn't be possible. non-binary people probably fascinate serious scientists immensely.

Quote from: Ativan Prescribed on October 18, 2013, 04:07:53 PM
The dream limb? Seems to have a connection there somewhere.
I've had some very realistic dreams that I was female bodied and lol, I was having some nice fun.
My body parts do change all the time in dreams. My gender can change in the middle of dreams sometimes.
My curiosity is getting to me. I'm gonna have to do some digging and keep an eye on these kinds of stuff when I run across them.
The idea that I could feel like I have different body parts, the ability to change them, just might be possible?

I both tried dreaming having a vegina while having one so the fellings where identical, having a penis which I never had, but diffently felt realistic, and having boobs after my top surgery where the look and felling where identical as I remembered.
I think the mind can do alot, dreams are only a exemple on how much our brains can do.

in a way its cool in another way it freaks me out.

the funniest thing my brain does is to give me a complete set of genitals (gonads kept inside the body though), in dreams or fantasy.
penis and vagina feel equally real, even when i have both. more than once, i've thought i really was supposed to have both. too bad only a very few intersex people experience growing a penis despite being born with female parts, it never happened to me.

Our minds are capable of so much more than we know or even try to do with them.

I believe gender is an elliptical continuum around a circle where male is on one side of the circle and female is on the other side, not two Gaussian curves where one is labeled male and the other labeled female.

I have no problems with non-binaries.  Many of you are really fun people who see things that I do not see. The rest I just haven't met yet.

Given that I am a binary-binary person, I don't know, in the way that a non-binary person does, the non-binary world.  I'm also thinking that in my elliptical around a circle thing, a male-female on one side could be very different than a male-female on the other side even though they are the same.  That's gets a little difficult to internalize. 

some more interesting search, done by a binary.
http://curt-rice.com/2013/10/19/the-great-citation-hoax-proof-that-women-are-worse-researchers-than-men/

what he actually does is invalidate the apparent evidence. and giving us a reason to feel good about not caring too much about belonging to one of the binaries. pretty interesting to see research about how even researchers manage to sex segregate themselves by their ways of networking. i'm looking forward to the day when gender truly doesn't matter, even on a subconscious level. (at least in fields where it makes no difference unless we make it)

Quote from: Taka on October 21, 2013, 06:15:24 AM
some more interesting search, done by a binary.
http://curt-rice.com/2013/10/19/the-great-citation-hoax-proof-that-women-are-worse-researchers-than-men/

what he actually does is invalidate the apparent evidence. and giving us a reason to feel good about not caring too much about belonging to one of the binaries. pretty interesting to see research about how even researchers manage to sex segregate themselves by their ways of networking. i'm looking forward to the day when gender truly doesn't matter, even on a subconscious level. (at least in fields where it makes no difference unless we make it)

I commented on the possibility of that happening in "Androgyne Angels." We may be headed in that direction!

I look forward to the day when it's only bodies that matter, and even then, they only matter to the people they belong to. No more roles, no more stereotypes, no more pseudo-psych. You won't bean "emotional woman" or a "strong man", you'll be a person that is more likely to cry because of your hormone recipe, or someone that has above average upper body strength. If we had to have more than one pronoun, have it be related to what kind of taste in fashion we have, or what job we do, or what color our hair is. sigh.

I got 40 pages into that book. It creeped the hell out of me. Sorry, Ativan. ;P

there are books now?

i'm waiting for science to make space travel fun. if they can't do that within very few years, i hope they find a way to make me stay alive and healthy until it happens.

for some reason i feel like i'm more likely to get a lab grown penis than any of the things that i really want...

I attempted to read The Singularuty Is Near by Kurzweil. It sounded like a dystopian nightmare come to life, to me. Asimov was easier to swallow, but... he wasn't hoping and praying for transhumanism to happen in his lifetime. I just don't think that we are ever meant to trandscend politics. Even as our consciousnesses fill the whole universe well figure out ways to be political.

Quote from: Lo on October 22, 2013, 09:48:09 AM
I attempted to read The Singularuty Is Near by Kurzweil. It sounded like a dystopian nightmare come to life, to me. Asimov was easier to swallow, but... he wasn't hoping and praying for transhumanism to happen in his lifetime. I just don't think that we are ever meant to trandscend politics. Even as our consciousnesses fill the whole universe well figure out ways to be political.

I hope you're wrong Lo, it would require a total and complete change of heart whereby there would be no urge for one being to feel a need to lord it over another.

Quote from: Shantel on October 22, 2013, 09:57:13 AM
I hope you're wrong Lo, it would require a total and complete change of heart whereby there would be no urge for one being to feel a need to lord it over another.

I guess that would be the whole point of transhumanism to begin with, though. At that point, we're no longer human, so it should follow that we wouldn't be concerned with our old pettiness and violence? I dunno. Whenever that transition stage happens, it's going to be ugly, and I'm sure many people won't survive it. Namely, the people too poor in the world to have access to much technology to begin with. Only our most privileged would have the luxury to transcend their humanness.

That seems like the epitome of typical human cruelty, to me. The Singularity has the potential to be the most political moment in human history and I doubt it'll fail to deliver.

I'm perfectly happy being human, is the other thing. It's very difficult to reconcile my gender and expression with my humanity, but it's a battle I absolutely refuse to lose. I'm here to broaden the definition of what it means to be a person, I don't want to forsake that. I'll be happy to transcend this sort of existence at exactly the same moment when everyone else does: death.

Lo,
  I don't see where anything political plays into the idea that suddenly the Great Kahuna, snaps fingers and we change nature instantly like somebody flipping a light switch, time as we know it ceases to exist and we find ourselves in a new dimension. Without bringing religion into it, we have to admit that faulty human nature is the crux of the current problem with humankind, we know that laws and politics can't and don't alter the human mindset this would require going through a diametric supernatural change.

Ah see I'm talking about technological transhumanism, the Singularity, when humans transcend biology by synthetic means, which is what all the "great" futurists speculate is inevitable given the speed at which technology and computing becomes ever-more sophisticated.

Basically... We download our minds into incorporeal supercomputers  nd cease to physically exist.