I don't understand the term trans

[1981]

The rhetoric surrounding transgenderism is just a giant clusterfuck of contradictions and bad science. I feel like this is a result of needing to justify transgenderism to the right wing majority. It's really frustrating, because while I wish I could wholeheartedly be an ally, all this nonsense about "male" and "female" brains makes me so angry. The idea that transgender people just want to be treated like their chosen gender seems to legitimise the notion that it's okay to treat people differently on that basis, and directly undermines how I've been fighting to be perceived and treated my whole life. I don't see why, in order to be progressive, I have to accept these really regressive notions about sex and gender.

My thoughts exactly. I mean, I get why some believe they were born in the wrong body. There probably is some kind of blueprint for these things. Animals don't need sex ed to know what to do with their genitals. They do get it wrong sometimes, although I've heard that females mounting males or other females may be dominance assertion. But I digress. What I don't get is where these strange ideas of what it's like to be a man or a woman come from.

I've never had a problem with being asked if I'm a man or a woman or called son, but I've learned that it's a touchy subject for some people. So... dunno. Who am I to say they shouldn't feel that way?

 

[manic_depressive13]

I don't see why, in order to be progressive, I have to accept these really regressive notions about sex and gender.

These regressive ideas that people aren't asserting, but that you're saddling us with?

If you want to talk regressive, though, what's with "chosen gender?" Sounds an awful lot like people relegating sexuality to a lifestyle choice.

I don't know what to say. I don't feel like calling people out, which is why I didn't quote anyone in my post. But if you care to read the thread, there are several mentions of the notion that the neurology of transgender people's brains match the gender they identify with. I can only conclude that this notion of male and female brains doesn't seem regressive to you, but it does to me.

Honestly I only phrased it like that because I felt "the gender they identify with" made my sentence too long and clunky, and I thought that was a decent substitute. But, does my sexuality being a choice somehow make it less legitimate?

 

[Something Amyss]

I don't know what to say. I don't feel like calling people out, which is why I didn't quote anyone in my post. But if you care to read the thread, there are several mentions of the notion that the neurology of transgender people's brains match the gender they identify with. I can only conclude that this notion of male and female brains doesn't seem regressive to you, but it does to me.

It's the latter part that's in dispute, not the former. This idea that it somehow undoes equality if male and female brains are a thing. Yet I doubt admitting that penises (generally male) and vaginas (generally female) are a thing in any way undermines things.

There are physiological differences between male and female bodies, and that doesn't justify treating women as lesser. Why would male and female brains? The terminology may not suit you, but you can identify structural differences between a male brain and a female one, and trans individuals do tend to more closely resemble the brains of the sex they identify with. This is reality, and if reality is inconvenient to your basis for the fight for equal treatment of women, you should probably reevaluate that.

However, it in no way impacts mine. Women deserve equal treatment regardless of sexual dimorphism, and they deserve treatment even if there are identifiable structural differences in the brain that can identify one as "male" or "female." I would honestly hope you would agree.

Honestly I only phrased it like that because I felt "the gender they identify with" made my sentence too long and clunky, and I thought that was a decent substitute. But, does my sexuality being a choice somehow make it less legitimate?

If I could choose to simply be a man, I honestly would. It shouldn't matter if your sexuality is a choice or not, but the terminology downplays the experience. I have been attacked and sexually assaulted because I don't meet up with the ideas that are supposed to come along with the genitals I was born with. I'd had almost a dozen suicide attempts by the time I was sixteen years old, and the trans suicide rate in general is alarmingly high. To be told this is the result of a choice is rather insulting.

I feel like I'm undermining them

Because you literally are. In the same way women have been undermined for ages, no less. Oh, and this was used as an argument against homosexuality and bisexuality, too.

My thoughts exactly. I mean, I get why some believe they were born in the wrong body. There probably is some kind of blueprint for these things. Animals don't need sex ed to know what to do with their genitals. They do get it wrong sometimes, although I've heard that females mounting males or other females may be dominance assertion. But I digress. What I don't get is where these strange ideas of what it's like to be a man or a woman come from.

I've never had a problem with being asked if I'm a man or a woman or called son, but I've learned that it's a touchy subject for some people. So... dunno. Who am I to say they shouldn't feel that way?

What are these strange ideas beyond the internal blueprint you already said probably existed?

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Without the expectations, men will still be men and women will still be women. What they won't be is anchored to ideals in terms of what that means with respect to gender roles.

Pardon my ignorance.

But since there are no gender roles (something I thought we left behind in the 1970s, but that's just blisfully ignorant me in my little corner of the world aparantly), then "genders" would be a useless identifier.

And if genders are useless, then why keep using it?

I mean wouldn't the best scenario involve that we only be "humans", and that our choices should only be limited by merit? And if identification based on visual data is necessary, then sex, instead of gender, seems a lot more reliable (xx = female, xy = male. Not that it matters, but it makes it easier for me to find the "man in the brown coat, and red cap" who were supposed to meat me in the bus-station).

Well one thing is that gender roles still do exist, they might have adapted some as women gained the ability to choose and have careers, but they're still a real thing. Also gender as an identifier is something that seems rather natural for humans. It's especially important because so many people hold traits of femininity and masculinity in places of high importance. Really in western society it's practically forbidden for males to show any feminine interests, let alone even allowing males to be able to wear clothing associated with women. Still because sexual dimorphism exists I doubt that we'll ever have genders be uniformly treated the same, with the same expectations placed upon them.

For people talking about the "male brain" and "female brain" concept.... Well I think Something Amyss and ThatOtherGirl have covered it better than I ever could, just because of the disorganized nature of my dyslexic brain. I just want to simplify the idea: Sexual dimorphism has an effect on the brain, human brain structures do differ based on sex, and trans folk generally tend to look more like the opposite sex than their birth sex when examined under MRI.

 

[Terminal Blue]

The terminology may not suit you, but you can identify structural differences between a male brain and a female one, and trans individuals do tend to more closely resemble the brains of the sex they identify with. This is reality, and if reality is inconvenient to your basis for the fight for equal treatment of women, you should probably reevaluate that.

You can observe it, yes. Whether it is repeatable is quite another matter.

The theory of "male and female brains" and its use as an explanation for "sexual deviance" has a long history, and a pretty disreputable history. The science of opening up skulls and measuring brains has always been used as a way of explaining social differences between people, and the defining difference between men and women, up until fairly recently, was generally assumed to be the inferiority of the latter. Thus, you have this ridiculous dance in early Darwinism whereby whenever a neurological advance is made (such as the discovery of the role of the frontal lobe in intelligence) anatomists miraculously discover all this evidence that male frontal lobes are so much obviously larger than those of women relative to the size of their brains, something which we now know not to be true (and which is particularly ironic because previously the exact opposite thesis was generally held to be true).

The issue here is not that male and female brains tend to display generalized differences. There are some which are very obvious (for example, male brains tend to be bigger for the same reason men's bodies in general tend to be bigger, because of the steroidal function of androgens) but that the search for neurological differences generally has nothing whatsoever to do with simply making observations about the brain. It is, just as in Darwin's time, entirely about providing explanations for social differences between men and women. That makes it very difficult to trust when people make anatomical observations (which are at this point extremely tiny and subtle) specifically to answer sociological questions.

I would say that the point at which something becomes "reality" in science (although in an empiricist sense nothing ever truly does) is not simply when you can observe it, but when you can use that observation as a predictive tool. When someone can look at a brain without knowing whether it comes from a trans person or not and say "that person identifies as female" or "that person identifies as male" and be right over and over again to the point that it can't just be a chance, well.. that would be the point at which prediction has been reached. We're still a long, long way off that point.

Oh, and this was used as an argument against homosexuality and bisexuality, too.

Yeah.. on that note.

Do you really think the people who came up with this whole idea that queer/trans folks/general sexual deviants ("inverts" as they were called back then) were neurologically similar to the "wrong" sex did so in order to promote tolerance of them, because if so that is some serious forgetfulness.

A few decades ago, you and I would be forced to take hormones in order to try and "normalize" our malfunctioning brains.

But yeah, on that note I suppose it's time to be brave and risk offending someone..

This whole notion that you're either male or female and that you must feel some intrinsic connection to one or the other because that's the sex your brain is.. that undermines me. That totally undermines my whole experience, because I don't want to be either male or female. I don't feel this innate special connection to one category or the other, in fact I find them both equally demeaning and coercive when they're applied to me, and I don't accept the sticking plaster that I must have an "intersexed brain" (much as some anatomist is doubtless enthralled at the prospect of cutting me open and mysteriously finding one) because frankly I don't feel any active connection to any kind of "inbetweeness" either. Gender to me is a big absence which I am nonetheless forced to play along with in order to pander to everyone's conviction that it's somehow absolutely determinant of who they are. That's precisely why I feel I can't live as a man any more, because to me it's not myself, it's not even close to myself. The only time I've ever felt close to myself is in the moment where someone genuinely doesn't know or doesn't care if I'm male or female, on the rare happy occasion where that's just okay.

If you feel that on some deep psychological level you feel like a man or a woman and think that it somehow has to be more than a feeling, then I will always tolerate and accept that and try to be as sensitive as possible, but it isn't an experience I can relate to and thus I can't see it as something you can generalize to all of humanity.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

You might want to try going back to the prior question, then. Because this here is something nobody's claiming. At least, not in any practical sense.

So if there are no feelings that only a man or only a woman can feel, then how on Earth could someone who is born, raised, educated, etc. as a man claim to "feel" like a woman? That only makes sense if there is some kind of existential experience of womanhood available only to those who are born with it, which again seems suuuper conservative.

I have to ask, why are you ignoring body issues? What exactly is super conservative about the idea that a woman would feel comfortable in a female body and not a male one? And vice versa.

Presumably because body issues aren't genetic in nature, but rather is something you develop from exposure to your peers.

The human brain is very plastic, so if the environment it finds itself in is filled with people who say you look weird, it'll develop an "ideal body image" which conforms to what your peers think.

If anything this just shows how peer-pressure works.

Do you have anything to back up that trans feelings in regards to their bodies are based on peer pressure.

Or did you seriously make a ridiculous non sequitur about other body issues?

 

[Roboshi]

The best way to describe it is this; imagine you were born with 1 arm, would you believe you were some new species of human with only one arm or that you should get an artificial arm to replace the one you were never born with? A trans person is like this, they see their body as the wrong one and does not fit what their brain tells them on a subconcious level that they should be.

There have been many studies about trans people and there has been proof that the brain of, for example, a Male to female trans person is more like a female than male brain.

 

[MrFalconfly]

You might want to try going back to the prior question, then. Because this here is something nobody's claiming. At least, not in any practical sense.

So if there are no feelings that only a man or only a woman can feel, then how on Earth could someone who is born, raised, educated, etc. as a man claim to "feel" like a woman? That only makes sense if there is some kind of existential experience of womanhood available only to those who are born with it, which again seems suuuper conservative.

I have to ask, why are you ignoring body issues? What exactly is super conservative about the idea that a woman would feel comfortable in a female body and not a male one? And vice versa.

Presumably because body issues aren't genetic in nature, but rather is something you develop from exposure to your peers.

The human brain is very plastic, so if the environment it finds itself in is filled with people who say you look weird, it'll develop an "ideal body image" which conforms to what your peers think.

If anything this just shows how peer-pressure works.

Do you have anything to back up that trans feelings in regards to their bodies are based on peer pressure.

Or did you seriously make a ridiculous non sequitur about other body issues?

Hang on, so are you saying that trans-people suffer from physical discomfort (for being in the wrong biomechanical vehicle)?

Because given the plasticity of the brain, I'm fairly certain that it wouldn't know if something was "wrong", without any sort of external indicator like physical discomfort, (pain, or fever, or dizziness), or the society in which it lives acting a certain way.

What I'm getting at, is that if we were to wind this forward to a future Star Trek'ish utopia, I'm not sure trans-people would ever realize they were trans, mainly because the only difference between them an me would be the configuration of the biomechanical vehicle in which our brain resides (and that difference could possibly, in such a society be considered just as petty as having a car with a manual or automatic transmission).

So, I guess you could say that some people feel a certain way because of peer-pressure, but that only shows how insidiously manipulative society can be.

I am however only forming these conclusions from a relatively limited knowledge of neuroscience, so if the human brain turns out to be more "solid state" than what I've envisioned then please feel free to correct me.

EDIT:

I am sorry if it sounds like I'm dismissing people's experiences here.

I just find that the answers usually become a lot clearer when you approach it completely clinically. If you remove all idea that what you're discussing is a human, and approach this as hardware and software, the answer usually expresses itself a lot clearer (in this case it, at least to me, seems like an issue which stems from societal pressures, and not an inherent feature with the hardware or software. Think of it like a PC with an AMD CPU in a world of Intel Cores. The AMD performs fine, and would probably never be the wiser before outside input would tell it that Intel is "correct", and AMD is "Wrong")

 

[1981]

What are these strange ideas beyond the internal blueprint you already said probably existed?

Mainly that some ways of thinking and feeling are inherently male or female. Many cisgendered believe that, but they've never had to think about it.

[...]

Yes, the findings are unreliable at best. Even if there are structural differences between one man's brain and one woman's brain, there's no way to prove that they're caused by the person's sex and not their background and lifestyle. [footnote]http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/27/9240.full[/footnote] [footnote]http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/18/cercor.bht348.full[/footnote] [footnote]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763414000724[/footnote] [footnote]http://endo.endojournals.org/cgi/content/short/147/4/1664[/footnote]

The study[footnote]http://www.medicaldaily.com/think-man-testosterone-treatment-allows-transgender-men-think-and-talk-man-350440[/footnote] that was mentioned earlier makes several fundamental mistakes. It assumes that injecting large amounts of a single substance into an adult demonstrates what that substance does in normal amounts. It assumes that structural changes indicate functional changes. The article goes even further into pseudoscience when it claims that those structural changes change how a person thinks.

 

[Something Amyss]

le snip

You removed most of what I planned on addressing, but....

This whole notion that you're either male or female and that you must feel some intrinsic connection to one or the other because that's the sex your brain is.. that undermines me.

Who are you addressing? Hopefully not me, and this was some random, stray comment. Because I certainly never said it was either/or. My SO is nonbinary. So if that's aimed at me, you picked the wrong person's mouth to shove words into.

Though I'm still going to take the position that the presence of the "female brain," in abstraction or reality, only limits women in the same way the presence of reproductive organs does. You actually bring that up as a point of contention (people still believe that a woman's capacity is determined as such, despite what you wrote) and as a nonsensical idea that belongs in the past. I stand by the position that such a sense of identity--wherever it derives--limiting women is equally as absurd and worthy of being left in the past.

But since your pre-edit post accused me of wanting to disempower women and discriminate, I don't think we have anything more to discuss. Probably ever.

Mainly that some ways of thinking and feeling are inherently male or female. Many cisgendered believe that, but they've never had to think about it.

So. To be clear. The point you agree with in manic's post is one that was a strawman about trans people undermining cis people. Because cis people feel that way. Even though what you're talking about is at best tangentially related.

If so, that would certainly explain my confusion.

 

[Something Amyss]

Do you have anything to back up that trans feelings in regards to their bodies are based on peer pressure.

And if so, I really want to know where this peer pressure comes from. Because not too long ago I mentioned exactly what my peers did to me for not being enough of a dude. It didn't make me want to be a man, it just made me want to die.

Also, I think that was a gross misapplication of neuroplasticity, but....

 

[manic_depressive13]

So. To be clear. The point you agree with in manic's post is one that was a strawman about trans people undermining cis people. Because cis people feel that way. Even though what you're talking about is at best tangentially related.

If so, that would certainly explain my confusion.

I'm not cis though? I don't identify with the gender that was assigned to me, and I have been attempting to reject the constraints of gender my whole life. I don't believe it does or ought to be a meaningful part of my identity. You are forcing it back on me, calling me cis, when I've never seen myself as a woman. That's my whole point.

Also, apparently rejecting the notion of strict genetic predeterminism undermines transgender people because that aspect of "choice" gives fodder to conservatives who want to use it against you. But you're pretending that "male" and "female" brains has no such implications? Does that not strike you as remotely hypocritical?

 

[dyre]

I'll admit that as a cis-gender male, I've always found being trans to be a lot more confusing to understand than being gay. Mainly because while I do identify as being straight, I don't really identify as being male in any meaningful way. It's not like I take it for granted or something...I just have no strong feelings about it at all. If I woke up tomorrow as a female, I don't think it would bother me much. [footnote]I mean, obviously it'd be weird explaining it to everyone, and I'd have to learn all the things that females are supposed to know, according to gender norms, but I wouldn't be bothered in terms of personal identity.[/footnote]

I support trans people in a "people should be able to identify however the want without fear of persecution" sort of way but I don't think any amount of explanation will lead me to actually understanding what goes on in their heads...

The rhetoric surrounding transgenderism is just a giant clusterfuck of contradictions and bad science. I feel like this is a result of needing to justify transgenderism to the right wing majority. It's really frustrating, because while I wish I could wholeheartedly be an ally, all this nonsense about "male" and "female" brains makes me so angry. The idea that transgender people just want to be treated like their chosen gender seems to legitimise the notion that it's okay to treat people differently on that basis, and directly undermines how I've been fighting to be perceived and treated my whole life. I don't see why, in order to be progressive, I have to accept these really regressive notions about sex and gender.

Yeah, I always found some of the "science" that some trans people use to explain their condition to be rather nonsensical, sometimes downright close to spiritualism. I imagine it's probably driven out of a desire to understand something that isn't very well understood in the scientific community, especially in the context of the general public not understanding your problems at all even if they try to.

I guess I can empathize with that in a certain way...I'm narcoleptic (totally irrelevant to being trans, but bear with me), but was undiagnosed for most of my early life thanks to a really shitty, lazy pediatrician, so for years I just struggled on not knowing what the hell was wrong with me. People tried to sympathize with me "just being really tired" but inevitably they just thought I was lazy; it didn't take long until I started hating their oh-so-helpful suggestions to just "get some more sleep at night" or "drink some more coffee." When I finally got a proper sleep study and was diagnosed, the knowledge that I was suffering from an actual condition was like a massive weight came off my shoulders. Not that they actually know how to cure it or anything, but it's really nice to know that I suffer from a real scientifically-documented issue, rather than my brain just being fucked up for reasons unknown.

I imagine if I lived in a time when narcolepsy had not been researched yet, I'd probably be tempted to latch onto any pseudo-scientific explanation I could find.

 

[1981]

Do you have anything to back up that trans feelings in regards to their bodies are based on peer pressure.

And if so, I really want to know where this peer pressure comes from. Because not too long ago I mentioned exactly what my peers did to me for not being enough of a dude. It didn't make me want to be a man, it just made me want to die.

An example of peer pressure in this case could be a man who acts in a traditionally female way, gets a lot of hate for it and starts to present as a woman to avoid it. Like how some non-whites dye and straighten their hair or bleach their skin to fit in. They don't do it because there's something wrong with them. I don't know if that is, or has ever been, the reason for anyone under the trans umbrella. I wouldn't be asking if I did.

So. To be clear. The point you agree with in manic's post is one that was a strawman about trans people undermining cis people. Because cis people feel that way. Even though what you're talking about is at best tangentially related.

The part I agreed with was that it's a bit backwards to think that there are ways to "be" that are inherently male or female. If someone's happy with their body and yet say they identify with the opposite gender, how do they know it? Where does the idea come from?

People who have rigid ideas about gender definitely feel undermined by those who don't fit into any of their categories. I feel undermined by those who claim that there's something wrong with me because I don't know how to be a woman.

 

[Terminal Blue]

snip

Goddamn it.. I really suck at using quotations properly. Anyway. I was just going to say I agree with you. There's not really much discussion value in that though, so I ultimately did a completely different reply in which you got misquoted. I'll make a new post for that.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Who are you addressing? Hopefully not me, and this was some random, stray comment. Because I certainly never said it was either/or. My SO is nonbinary. So if that's aimed at me, you picked the wrong person's mouth to shove words into.

Isn't that kind of the whole purpose of talking about "male and female" brains? Isn't that why it's always brought up in the context of trans issues and why it's become such a crucial part of how many people contextualize the push for trans rights.. I admit I might have been a bit zealous as this thread has been grinding me down a little, to be honest, but I don't really see how you can escape those implications while still repeating the same argument. Why is it important, in this case, to establish that men and women have "sexually dimorphic" brains?

Because I would say it's important because it functions as an argument against this crude biologism which is often wheeled out to oppose the idea that transwomen are "authentic" women. The problem is that it does so by demanding a kind of limited inclusion in that same "biology is destiny" reasoning which makes that argument so problematic in the first place.

Though I'm still going to take the position that the presence of the "female brain," in abstraction or reality, only limits women in the same way the presence of reproductive organs does.

Right. So why does it matter? If it doesn't impact on anything, why is there any reason to even talk about it in this context?

But since your pre-edit post accused me of wanting to disempower women and discriminate, I don't think we have anything more to discuss. Probably ever.

Now whose putting words in people's mouth.

I deleted that stuff because I felt it was too long and wasn't really on topic, but the point wasn't to accuse you of "wanting" anything, it'was to try and provide an answer (the only answer I can see as remotely satisfactory) to the question I just posed above. Talking about "male and female" brains is inevitably talking, not just about the physical structure of the brain (which differs slightly between all of us, not just between men and women) but talking about the supposed properties of the male and female mind. That is breaking down the sex gender distinction which has always served as the most persuasive and powerful argument for rejecting the idea that men and women have inherent natural competences or "roles", an idea which has always, always functioned to the privilege of men over women..

Now, I don't fundamentally believe in a sex gender distinction myself, albeit for quite different reasons, so I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I'm just saying, if you think that gender identity is determined by sexual dimorphic qualities of the brain (and I see now that maybe you don't, but then why talk about brains at all?) what else might be determined by the same thing? What social differences between men and women might also be viewed as "natural" expressions of sexual difference? I'm not suggesting you support those implications, only that you've left the door pretty wide open for them.

I fully acknowledge that you wouldn't recognize or agree with any of these implications. Maybe you don't even recognize this argument as valid (it is a bit of a slippery slope, but so is the argument that if we don't accept that being transgender is rooted in some physical "natural" property of ourselves this will inevitably lead to discrimination.) That's not why I deleted it, I figured it wasn't necessary to go into so much detail and didn't belong in the same post as one in which I discuss my own personal feelings. If you want to repost it here, do so and we can talk about it in more detail (I don't have a copy of what I wrote myself).

 

[Terminal Blue]

It's a result of people in almost intolerable pain, acting and thinking desperately. I don't think you can realistically strip people of their illusions about themselves, until you offer them something hopeful. Right now, there is really very little hopeful about being trans.

That isn't everyone's experience though, it isn't mine.

I've come out a few times over the course of my life, and I'm very glad of that because it's given me a perspective my younger self wouldn't have had. It taught me that sometimes I had to value my life for what it was, not what other people wanted it to be. It taught me to resist the casual equation you made earlier (forgive me if I'm wrong) between "not normal" and "objectively wrong".

When someone devalues me as a person, I don't accept that as something wrong with me. It would be no less true for me to say there is something wrong with them which creates the need to do that. Thus, I don't feel desperation or pain, I see only a choice between living a closeted life or not. Either has consequences.

That isn't a simple choice, and I'd be lying if I said there weren't days when I just want to get up and present as male because it's easier, but even then it's empowering to admit that and to know that if I did (and I still do sometimes) it still says more about the world than it does about me. I don't need to believe that I was born this way or that I didn't choose it.. I did choose it and I still do. I make the choice every day. Granted it's a choice between being happy but having to deal with other people's shit and being miserable but not, which isn't much of a choice, but it's a choice I'm proud to be able to make.

I'm minimizing my own angst now and I suspect it probably comes off as a bit fake. Suffice to say though, I think it's very telling that we've picked up on this narrative of "intollerable pain" as the only possible trans experience. It isn't, it can be a happy and wonderful thing too, and a thing which makes very proud of my fellow human beings and myself.

This isn't to try and shame people for whom it isn't, and I hope there's enough clues here to deduce that it actually isn't for me a lot of the time, but I think there can be some value in keeping the good parts of the story in, rather than leaving them out for the sake of sympathy. Sympathy falls prey to easily to pathologization and, ultimately, to "normalization".

 

[ThatOtherGirl]

Think about the dynamics of the situation. You have people who probably, objective, have something "wrong" with them. That doesn't mean they should be forced to "fix" it, anymore than you should be allowed to make me take medication for ADD, or a specific therapy for any other problem. The technology we have now doesn't allow for much in the way of treatment for trans, so people desperately respond on their own with cosmetic measures, HRT, and culture. If we could give people a pill and switch their genders, do you think trans "culture" would be the swirling mess it is now? It's a result of people in almost intolerable pain, acting and thinking desperately. I don't think you can realistically strip people of their illusions about themselves, until you offer them something hopeful. Right now, there is really very little hopeful about being trans.

That alone would be a bad situation, but the whole mess becomes entirely toxic with how much hate and fear there is directed at trans people. Suddenly not only are trans people desperate and isolated because of their condition, but they're desperate and isolated and HUNTED and scared for their lives and wellbeing. Suddenly it's not just about personal thinking and figuring things out, but defending your very existence from the outside becomes a huge part of what you do all of the time. In that situation it's more important to circle the wagons, than examine shared beliefs. The fact of a group identity becomes more important than the quality of that group or its beliefs.

Until the trans community can come out of its purely defensive crouch, they're not really going to get anywhere.

I would like to point out that the insistence that there cannot be a difference between male and female brains is also a defensive and reactive belief. It is equally unjustified by scientific data. Back in the day feminists circled the wagons in exactly the same way and built a defensive rhetoric of their own in exactly the same manner. Neither rhetoric is based on strong experimental evidence or well established facts about how the brain works because we do not have strong experimental evidence or well established facts of how the brain works.

It has been suggested in this thread that trans people insisting on inherent gender is hypocritical because it opens the door for discrimination based on assigned gender. If that is the case then insisting on non inherent gender is equally hypocritical because it opens the door for discrimination based on identity gender.

I think the seeming clash comes from two politically motivated ridiculous oversimplifications of the brain, which is easily the most complex part of the human body, and the developmental process of a human being, which is even more complex. If we stop pretending these things are simple for political reasons then there is plenty of room for gender to be an inherent part of some people while in no way opening the door for gender based discrimination of either kind. Because the brain has hundreds of jobs it does, our consciousness and intellect is just one of its many tasks.

Here is the thing. If trans people, as Du Svardenvyrd put it, have something wrong with them (and don't worry, I get what you mean, I am not offended, we don't have great language to talk about this stuff) then what is wrong with them is some part of their brain insists they are a certain gender. That means that there is some part of at least those brains that tells a person what gender they are. There has to be a physical difference that results in the mental difference. There is no possible way around that point. The very existence of trans people and the real and documented pain many feel insists there must be something about a brain that can be gendered. There has to be a physical source for even mental pain because ultimately a mental state is a physical state. You can argue about cause and if it is inherent and all of that but you cannot get around the fact it has to be there somewhere.

Now I don't have the answer because no one does. We do not know enough about the brain to come to an actual answer. But let me suggest one possibility that accommodates both views:

We know that the human brain has a map of the body, a sort of virtual representation of what the body should be and what kind of feedback the brain should be receiving from it. I would suggest that one possible reason a person might be transgender is that at some key point in development for some reason this virtual representation was "wired" to expect a certain physical makeup and therefore certain kinds of signals. Later on when the body starts to express characteristics this part of the brain receives signals it does not expect and not receiving signals it does expect. It then pings another part of the brain warning signals that something is wrong, causing gender dysphoria.

This explanation allows for some part of the brain to be gendered while in no way implying that there is a difference in the way people think or their mental capabilities.

Of course, the explanation is incomplete. For example, it in no way attempts to touch on or explain non binary individuals or people who do not have a strong gender identify, nor does it claim to explain every trans woman or trans man. And it does not have to because cis and trans are umbrella terms that encompass many different conditions all of which may have different root causes even when they express in near identical ways. I could go on for quite some time refining it, working in things like how obviously learned gender behavior can alleviate gender dysphoria to a point, etc.

But that doesn't matter because I am not trying to say that is how it actually works, I am just trying to make a point here. If we stop and remember that the brain does more than one thing the seeming clash is very easy to overcome. We need to stop thinking of the nervous system as the pile of cells that we think with. This oversimplified view is causing division between people that should be allies.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I would like to point out that the insistence that there cannot be a difference between male and female brains is also a defensive and reactive belief.

Right, but I don't think anyone is insisting that. For one, it's blatantly wrong. If we define sex as gonadal sex, for example, then sex hormones can have a large impact on growth, including growth in the brain. Again, obvious example: "male" brains (i.e. the brains of people born with testes instead of ovaries) to be slightly larger, on average.

However, knowing this to be true doesn't equate to knowing whether it is important. Brain size was, in the past, considered absolutely critical to intelligence and formed a major part of the argument that men were naturally more intelligent than women. We now know the impact of brain size on actual intelligence is extremely small and that the differences between men and women can be effectively disregarded. Why do other differences which may or may not exist have to be accounted for?

It has been suggested in this thread that trans people insisting on inherent gender is hypocritical because it opens the door for discrimination based on assigned gender. If that is the case then insisting on non inherent gender is equally hypocritical because it opens the door for discrimination based on identity gender.

What you have failed to understand perhaps is that the most important question, the underlying question for those of us who are skeptical of "male and female brains" is why we are talking about them now. We are talking about identity, a property of human beings which is only intelligible on a social level, and yet here we are having an argument about incredibly tiny differences which have been claimed to exist in the brain. Why?

The answer is because this whole idea that this whole idea that biology is destiny, that who we are socially and personally is determined by anatomical variations in our bodies, is the original assumption of the two you have pointed out, and at virtually every point it has been wheeled out to defend some form of natural difference between people, whenever it has been wheeled out to justify treating people differently or assigning exceptional status to some over others, it has turned out to be wholly and completely wrong.

The argument that the brain is too complex for us to understand is true, but also increasingly not true, and is certainly not true in the field of anatomical research. Just over a hundred years ago when some Darwinists were still claiming the neurological differences between men and women were so utterly, staggeringly enormous that they couldn't even be considered members of the same species, this idea could survive because actually observing the brain was hard. Today, we can stick someone in an MRI scanner and see the whole thing in complete detail, and virtually every part we can see exhibits a degree of natural variation which is largely unchanged depending on whether you are looking at a male or female brain. The kinds of differences which sexual difference researchers are coming out with today are literally too small to be seen with the naked eye or picked up by an MRI scanner.

Sexual difference has always been the sea monster on the edge of the map. It's been the thing which everyone swears exists but gets further and further away the more the blank spaces of the map are filled in. At what point do we give up and simply stop trying to find the sea monster?[footnote]And no, that doesn't mean we stop trying to find what actually is there, but when do we stop assuming it's going to be a sea monster.[/footnote]

The search for sexual difference was always political. There was never a golden pre-feminist era when sexual difference research was about "objective" knowledge and nothing else. It has always been about the need to explain, defend or justify a given social (and political) situation, because without that there would be no point doing it (at least, not in the way it's always been done). In this sense, our incredible understanding of the brain (which is incredible, compared to a hundred years ago or even fifty years ago) has come about in spite of sexual difference research, not because of it.

There has to be a physical difference that results in the mental difference. There is no possible way around that point. The very existence of trans people and the real and documented pain many feel insists there must be something about a brain that can be gendered.

No, it absolutely doesn't.

I'm sad right now because my cat died the other day. That doesn't mean there must be a part of my brain which tells me I'm supposed to have a cat.

I suspect some people are going to find this analogy offensive. I don't mean it as such, I'm merely pointing out that there is a distinction between cognition and neurology. Just because we think or feel something doesn't mean there's any reason to believe it's inherent to us, even if it's very deep seated, very real and very impossible to ever change, even if it's a core part of our identity.

Sexual orientation is a core part of many people's identity, yet I can guarantee that the vast majority of those people were at one point sexually aroused from being wiped during a nappy change, and it likely made absolutely no difference who was doing the wiping. Whether we are born with innate tendencies is an interesting question, but we aren't born with thoughts or concepts, not even about ourselves. Thoughts aren't something that is "hardwired" into our brains.

We know that the human brain has a map of the body, a sort of virtual representation of what the body should be and what kind of feedback the brain should be receiving from it.

In a sense, yes. This "map" develops over the course of our lives, however, and is in no way inherent to us. There is no single part of our brain specifically responsible for storing or retaining it. Furthermore, it's never something of which we are consciously aware, at least not until we lose a limb.

Again, a newborn child can't even recognize itself in a mirror. There's no evidence it has any sense of self or personal identity whatsoever.

But that doesn't matter because I am not trying to say that is how it actually works, I am just trying to make a point here. If we stop and remember that the brain does more than one thing the seeming clash is very easy to overcome. We need to stop thinking of the nervous system as the pile of cells that we think with. This oversimplified view is causing division between people that should be allies.

We are allies. I don't see any problems with that.

 

[Dragonbums]

The definition of trans (transexual for the full term) is one who identifies as a different gender than the one their society deems they are. For instance society says that if you have boobs, a vagina, and have a relatively high pitched voice you by default identify as a women. Now if this woman was trans, that would mean that they actually identify as a male.

From what I also know- trans people come in all shapes and sizes. Most trans individuals desire at some point to undergo a sex transition surgery or intake testosterone/estrogen medication regularly so they can 'look' the gender they desire to be identified as.

A woman transitioning to a man would be considered a 'transman'

A man transitioning into a woman would be considered a 'transwoman'

However you have some individuals who either don't/can't do the usual methods of transitioning I've stated above usually dress the part. With women who identify as male often using a clothing called binders to minimize their breast size.

Generally speaking when engaging with a trans person it's often polite and very well appreciated if you ask for their preferred pronouns. If you have a friend who is trans they often take the first steps to transitioning by changing their name and pronouns. It will make it a lot easier for them if you do your best to address them by their new names and pronouns since they will probably go through a hard enough time just getting people who are close to them to accept their choices.

Now obviously more complicated things like asexual trans, gender fluid trans, etc. But for now you can simply stick to the basics and work your way up from there.