Quote from: pretty on April 04, 2012, 05:33:17 PM
I don't see why people don't understand that if it is defined as just an issue of personal preference and not a real, physiological, actual medical problem, the argument for trans rights and legal protections and all that loses most of its weight, because then it is on the same footing as basically any lifestyle choice.

that makes sense to me, because then the bulk of people would say "so, this is a choice. you have a penis, so you should learn to be male, you do not have a penis, so you should learn to be female." even at that, i don't see why it has to be a problem if it was a choice, but that is just me. i do not believe ones gender expression is a threat or harm to anyone else. it's only sexism and bigotry that is why gender is so tenuous from the outside world.

Quote from: Darrin on April 04, 2012, 04:37:54 PM
This. I find there is too much emphasis on this "male brain" "female brain" jargon. Does it really matter what "brain" you have? Doesn't your self identification matter most?

Like "pretty" said, if it has no biological basis than it's akin to identifying as a dog or a vampire, and the criticism it receives is warranted. People would be correct to say "you're not a guy, but a girl who wants to be one". There are physical differences in male and female brains, and if someone has a functionally female brain they are female by definition, no matter how they identify. I mean, I could refuse to label myself as a brunette, but it doesn't change the fact that I have brown hair.

Quote from: pretty on April 04, 2012, 05:33:17 PM
I don't see why people don't understand that if it is defined as just an issue of personal preference and not a real, physiological, actual medical problem, the argument for trans rights and legal protections and all that loses most of its weight, because then it is on the same footing as basically any lifestyle choice.

Does it matter if it were a lifestyle choice? I'm not saying it is, but shouldn't people have the right and protection to live as they want to as long as they don't hurt anyone else? Also, if there is a correlation between brain patterns and being trans, then I guess we should all get brain scans before we get HRT and surgery. After all, we need to weed out those who are doing it as a mere lifestyle choice....

Quote from: pretty on April 04, 2012, 05:33:17 PM
I don't see why people don't understand that if it is defined as just an issue of personal preference and not a real, physiological, actual medical problem, the argument for trans rights and legal protections and all that loses most of its weight, because then it is on the same footing as basically any lifestyle choice.

Admitting that we don't know what causes people to be transgender isn't the same as saying it is a lifestyle choice. It is very well a real, physiological, actual medical problem, because people experience it and become much more stable and happy individuals when they get treatment for it. That's what matters. But at this point in time I don't think it is a good idea to try and say we know that the brain or whatever aspect of a person's body is what is causing it. There are more than likely a combination of factors that can contribute to a person being trans.

Quote from: Darrin on April 04, 2012, 06:17:24 PM
Does it matter if it were a lifestyle choice? I'm not saying it is, but shouldn't people have the right and protection to live as they want to as long as they don't hurt anyone else? Also, if there is a correlation between brain patterns and being trans, then I guess we should all get brain scans before we get HRT and surgery. After all, we need to weed out those who are doing it as a mere lifestyle choice....

It shouldn't matter but in our society, it does. It's like the argument over homosexuality, whether it's a choice or a biological predisposition, and it shouldn't matter but the fact is that people care. People will use it to invalidate our identities if it's a choice.
Sometimes idealism has to take a back seat to reality.

Quote from: poptart on April 04, 2012, 06:41:23 PM
It shouldn't matter but in our society, it does. It's like the argument over homosexuality, whether it's a choice or a biological predisposition, and it shouldn't matter but the fact is that people care. People will use it to invalidate our identities if it's a choice.
Sometimes idealism has to take a back seat to reality.

Yes, sometimes we do need to be realistic about our situations, but at the same time, my concern is if they do find a link with brain chemistry and being trans that'll lead to brain scans and a battery of tests before being allowed HRT and surgeries. It seems like it'll be used as more of a gatekeeping method than anything else. Which could be a big issue for some non-binary identified folks who want those things. I'd just say, be careful what you wish for.

Quote from: poptart on April 04, 2012, 06:08:18 PM
Like "pretty" said, if it has no biological basis than it's akin to identifying as a dog or a vampire, and the criticism it receives is warranted. People would be correct to say "you're not a guy, but a girl who wants to be one". There are physical differences in male and female brains, and if someone has a functionally female brain they are female by definition, no matter how they identify. I mean, I could refuse to label myself as a brunette, but it doesn't change the fact that I have brown hair.

Well what if it's the hormones, not the brain. There's evidence that might point to that as well. Then everyone who argued it's their brain that defined their gender would be  screwed. As someone else pointed out, it is most likely a combination of factors - and a combination of factors never creates such as clear-cut distinction as some seem to wish for.

Additionally, there is a difference between "i am male/female because my brain says so" and "i am male/female because my brain looks a lot like a male/female brain on a scan".
Assuming no one here had a brain scan performed to "determine" their gender, what if your brain scan "matches" the gender you were assigned at birth? Would that make you any less trans? Would it make being trans feel like a choice to you?

Quote from: emil on April 04, 2012, 07:04:28 PM
Well what if it's the hormones, not the brain. There's evidence that might point to that as well. Then everyone who argued it's their brain that defined their gender would be  screwed. As someone else pointed out, it is most likely a combination of factors - and a combination of factors never creates such as clear-cut distinction as some seem to wish for.

Additionally, there is a difference between "i am male/female because my brain says so" and "i am male/female because my brain looks a lot like a male/female brain on a scan".
Assuming no one here had a brain scan performed to "determine" their gender, what if your brain scan "matches" the gender you were assigned at birth? Would that make you any less trans? Would it make being trans feel like a choice to you?

... Which hormones are you referring to? If hormones could influence a person's gender then taking HRT would affect gender identity, which it doesn't. Do you mean the prenatal hormones that assist in developing the brain and programming it to be either male or female, physically and functionally?
You can not determine gender on a brain scan because the part of the brain that determines gender, part of the hypothalamus, is only accessible after death. All the research that's been conducted on gendered brain structure/chemistry has been conducted post mortem. It's a non-issue, therefore.

If my brain wasn't physically and functionally male I wouldn't experience the psychological symptoms of transsexualism in the first place, and yes it would make me "less trans" entirely. I'd be a cisgendered girl.

Quote from: poptart on April 04, 2012, 07:55:50 PM
... Which hormones are you referring to? If hormones could influence a person's gender then taking HRT would affect gender identity, which it doesn't. Do you mean the prenatal hormones that assist in developing the brain and programming it to be either male or female, physically and functionally?
You can not determine gender on a brain scan because the part of the brain that determines gender, part of the hypothalamus, is only accessible after death. All the research that's been conducted on gendered brain structure/chemistry has been conducted post mortem. It's a non-issue, therefore.

If my brain wasn't physically and functionally male I wouldn't experience the psychological symptoms of transsexualism in the first place, and yes it would make me "less trans" entirely. I'd be a cisgendered girl.

well, clearly we're all transgender here. if we weren't, i highly doubt any of us would've felt these feelings in the past or google searched and joined this site. you could keep looking for something more, but there just isn't.

The answer is yes, with the caveat that some cis males do deviate from the norm, and so would do some transmen

I'd just like to point out that the post-mortem studies being mentioned are on very small sample sizes.. And the results, even then, were somewhat equivocal..

Do I think there is a difference between the physical structure of a male and female brain? Sure, that's a given.. Do I think that trans people have the opposite type brain to their birth gender? No, not entirely. 

Quote from: poptart on April 04, 2012, 07:55:50 PM
... Which hormones are you referring to? If hormones could influence a person's gender then taking HRT would affect gender identity, which it doesn't. Do you mean the prenatal hormones that assist in developing the brain and programming it to be either male or female, physically and functionally?

I'm referring to the exposure of a testosterone level higher than average, throughout a longer period of time, also during critical developmental periods, not just in the womb. It has been found that FTMs tend to have higher testosterone levels:
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/4/1011.short
Hormones CAN in fact reshape the brain, throughout our lives, there has been research on that as well.

And there HAS been research showing "gendered" brain structures on scans, not just post mortem via brain slicing, so your information isn't up to date in that respect:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/01/26/scans-show-difference-in-transgender-brains/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395610001585

Also, the  brain-slicing findings only ever referred to MTFs:
http://faculty.bennington.edu/~sherman/sex/TRANSGENDER.pdf

Once you've read through this you will find out that transgendered person's brain might very well appear more "in between" than just simply "male" or "female" (ignoring for a moment that "male" and "female" as binary categories aren't well established at all when it comes to brains).

In my opinion, it's really important that we should do our research before simply claiming we know our brain is physically male or female, especially if one wants to claim that this detail is supposed to make all the difference. It is just as important, however, to keep in mind that all the research which has been done on the subject so far included very small sample groups and thus all the conclusions made were phrased very tentatively. There are still a dozen factors that have been disregarded completely so far, and it is far too early on to think things have been figured out.

Quote from: emil on April 04, 2012, 10:44:28 PM
I'm referring to the exposure of a testosterone level higher than average, throughout a longer period of time, also during critical developmental periods, not just in the womb. It has been found that FTMs tend to have higher testosterone levels:
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/4/1011.short
Hormones CAN in fact reshape the brain, throughout our lives, there has been research on that as well.

And there HAS been research showing "gendered" brain structures on scans, not just post mortem via brain slicing, so your information isn't up to date in that respect:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/01/26/scans-show-difference-in-transgender-brains/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395610001585

Also, the  brain-slicing findings only ever referred to MTFs:
http://faculty.bennington.edu/~sherman/sex/TRANSGENDER.pdf

Once you've read through this you will find out that transgendered person's brain might very well appear more "in between" than just simply "male" or "female" (ignoring for a moment that "male" and "female" as binary categories aren't well established at all when it comes to brains).

In my opinion, it's really important that we should do our research before simply claiming we know our brain is physically male or female, especially if one wants to claim that this detail is supposed to make all the difference. It is just as important, however, to keep in mind that all the research which has been done on the subject so far included very small sample groups and thus all the conclusions made were phrased very tentatively. There are still a dozen factors that have been disregarded completely so far, and it is far too early on to think things have been figured out.

Well, I'm smart enough to know when I've been beat.

Quote from: pretty on April 03, 2012, 01:51:04 PM
Who cares. You are asking a loaded question because even if it did, it's not politically correct and being PC takes precedence over reality. But, ya know, maybe I'm the only one who has noticed, but there's *way* more "butch dyke lesbians" in the MTF board than in probably any sampling of the general female population. Similarly, there's way more "gay femme men" here. 

regarding your last sentence, I would say there are more people willing to be fluid in their gender presentation amongst the trans population than in the general population.  It's certainly easy to back that up with anecdotal evidence here, and it almost seems like a no brainer considering we are breaking societies' rules about gender anyway.

The problem with your conclusions is that unless there is definitive science I'm not aware of, it is not yet known whether these behavioural patterns that are common to men and males/women and females occur because of brain structure, hormonal effects on brain chemistry, social conditioning, or a combination of all of these things.

So with that in mind you cannot make a strong case for male brain = male behavior until you can manage to control for social conditioning. (and good luck with that)

Oh wow, science now... eh.

How about Ockham' s razor: "other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one." Actually "Plurality must never be posited without necessity"

Please do try and tell, how a female brain = male behaviour... @#$%^&
I might be willing to spend more, much more listening time to this sort of argument.

Who cares *how* female behaviour comes about, if not in the brain... it is the BRAIN (not our ass) that makes us behave how we do.

How it all came about to be so, got next to nothing to do with how it IS in the present, in the here and now...

Axélle

Quote from: Twin Hammer Tommy on April 06, 2012, 07:43:46 AM
regarding your last sentence, I would say there are more people willing to be fluid in their gender presentation amongst the trans population than in the general population.  It's certainly easy to back that up with anecdotal evidence here, and it almost seems like a no brainer considering we are breaking societies' rules about gender anyway.

The problem with your conclusions is that unless there is definitive science I'm not aware of, it is not yet known whether these behavioural patterns that are common to men and males/women and females occur because of brain structure, hormonal effects on brain chemistry, social conditioning, or a combination of all of these things.

So with that in mind you cannot make a strong case for male brain = male behavior until you can manage to control for social conditioning. (and good luck with that)

I don't really get your point  . If social conditioning mostly or wholly creates your gender, then it makes you the gender you are and that would invalidate anyone's claim to being the gender they were not conditioned as in the first place. I wouldn't want to bother proving the existence of a brain sex because it seems pretty plain that it does exist to some degree and on the off chance that it doesn't, transsexualism is about as meaningful as picking a favorite color anyway.

People try to abstract gender into something mysterious so they can define it as anything they want but gender doesn't mean anything to begin with except as an indicator of the contrast between sex-typical personality and behavior. I don't think you can have a "gender identity" that is completely separate from the actual substance of that gender.  Because then it wouldn't be a gender identity anymore.

Quote from: Nygeel on April 03, 2012, 09:16:07 AM
What people consider a "male brain" isn't the brain of somebody who identifies as male. Often times people with aspergers syndrome are labeled as having a "very male brain" yet I know a lot of trans women with aspergers so doesn't that invalidate their gender?

Maybe "male brain" in that context is meaning logical brain. Sort of a social description rather than a scientific one? The thing is we really know almost absolutly nothing about the brain.

It's quite possible that pschyatrists will be thought of in the future like alchemists are today.

I feel I'm far more logical than any trans man. Yet i still feel that I think in a far more rounded opened ended way than men.

Pretty is right. Science=politics. It's about getting transgenderness reconized by insurace too

C'mon boys and girls. Don't so naive. Those studys are bogus at worst, insubstantial and inconclusive at best.

The real question is, do you want to pretend that it has been proven scientifcally to further you own objective till it is proven or not?

Or is there a better way? The agitators have chosen this pathway. Do you agree with them? I kind of do. But I'm certainly aware of what it is and i'm not following blindly.

Quote from: Nygeel on April 02, 2012, 11:01:41 PM
I think the idea of a "male brain" is rubbish.

I agree with this to an extent. The whole argument surrounding "female" and "male" brains has been used for decades to try to claim male superiority over women, by trying to prove that men have better spacial perception, better reasoning skills, better in math/science vs. women who have more "emotional intelligence," verbal communication skills, sensitivity etc. They really don't hold much water. More recently it's turned into the "different but equal" nauseating argument, and are more the material of gossip magazines that try to tell women "how to understand your man when he's an ->-bleeped-<-."

That said, I do think there is a difference, at least generally, when it comes to sexual dimorphism in certain areas of the brain. But nothing I've read seems to prove overwhelmingly in one direction or the other that it has much an effect on differences in cognitive function among the sexes. It is also problematic concept when you realise there are more than two sexes physiologically. The studies that show trans-identified people who identify one way or the other tend to have brain makeup similar to their true sex do seem to hold water, though. In that respect, it's interesting to think of how brain makeup functions to give a person a sense of self, which is where understanding your body as a particular sex seems to come in.

Quote from: Rubberneck on April 06, 2012, 03:54:38 PM
I feel I'm far more logical than any trans man.

I definitely think you're being accurate to label this a feeling, since it's impossible to meaningfully test.