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Interesting article

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by hii, Apr 18, 2014.

  1. hii

    hii
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    I love it when I'm searching around the internet and I find a real gem like this one. Can't believe my dad continues to believe that I'm on my computer so much because I'm playing video games or something. :rolle:

    Bad neuroscience and gender: reading this will change your brain ยป No measure of health

    I think this really helps to support letting people change their sex characteristics if they don't feel like the gender (or should I say, stereotypes) that they were born into.
     
  2. Gates

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    There could be some flaws in these studies; however, my understanding is that there are small but significant differences between male and female brains and between those of cis and trans* people. My counselor (a PhD in psychology) actually verified that trans* neurophysiology is typically different from that of cis (e.g., masculine brain, female body, etc.) and has to do with the amount of androgen the fetus is exposed to at some particular developmental stage.
     
  3. hii

    hii
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    Yeah, I definitely don't think that males and females are inherently the same and maybe it's biased to hear this from a trans person, but it seems to me that a lot of individual characteristics have to do with conditioning. I like how this article points out that although when you do brain scans on a lot of different people, a small difference will be a lot, there's much more of a difference between randomly selected individual people.

    ---------- Post added 18th Apr 2014 at 12:48 PM ----------

    Oh, and I'm sorry if I sounded like I was saying that anyone can be transgender because I'm sure that's not the case. But it seems that we tend to think that there's a lot more of a difference between males and females than there actually is.
     
    #3 hii, Apr 18, 2014
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2014
  4. Gates

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    1. How is it any less biased to hear from a cisgendered person?
    2. This is a single article and therefore not the gospel according to modern neuroscience
    3. Random sampling should yield a greater difference (i.e., smaller p value); this actually suggests that the data are robust.

    Of course, there are fewer differences in overall human physiology (including neuro) than is often suggested, even among sexual characteristics. However, this does not mean that statistically significant differences should be overlooked. If that were the case, I could simply adopt a random number of male children and rear them all as girls and they should all be transgendered - it doesn't work that way.
     
  5. hii

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    Alright, alright, I'm sure you know your stuff. I'm not treating this like the gospel, and the idea of gender makes sense- otherwise, why would we use it? I'm not looking for some huge global revolution, but maybe to reassure a few people that it's not weird to feel like another gender.
     
  6. Gates

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    Of course it isn't weird to feel like another gender than the one typically assigned to your birth sex. Polymorphisms abound in all natural systems. From my perspective, and I will say that it is discretely mine, a trans* person is simply a less typical phenotype of their identified sex (e.g., a transwoman is simply a different female phenotype, etc.). I think that people need to stop looking for explanations of gender and start working toward the understanding that binaries do not accurately model biological systems.
     
  7. hii

    hii
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    :eusa_clap I agree. Although I will say that, myself, I believe that nurture plays a bigger role than nature.

    I know that this article does take an extreme stand but I think it's good for people to get what they believed without thought shaken up a bit sometimes. It's harder to get something through your head for the first time when you get down to technicalities- that's for analyzing afterwards.
     
  8. Gates

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    So were you reared to be gay?
     
  9. hii

    hii
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    Okay, now this is turning into way too broad (and contradictory) a topic, my friend. :lol:

    I'll try to clarify instead and say that by nurture I mean environmental factors that are way too complex to understand where they came from. Although there is innate differences in people's brains, those can channel in different ways, and there's no way to change them a lot of the times so it's not like we can choose for people to turn out a certain way. So, it's not like these people can just change their ways of thinking. If anyone says that "they've always been this way" I'll believe them. But either way, I don't see anything wrong with being gay or trans so I don't think it should matter to people.

    ---------- Post added 18th Apr 2014 at 05:13 PM ----------

    You are aware that I'm trans myself, right?
     
  10. Gates

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    I apologize but this is a touchy subject for me. I have little respect for many of the nurture over nature psychologists because they often promote the idea of willful nonconformity. I do not disagree with you that complex environmental factors play a role in identity formation; however, I believe that if the genetic disposition is not there, the likelihood of some otherwise unique quality emerging must be very, very low. Nurture acts on nature but regardless of nurture, it would be extraordinarily unlikely to make a tiger behave like a wombat. :slight_smile:
     
  11. hii

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    Of course. :slight_smile: You can just ignore me, you know. Nevertheless that was a cool debate.
     
  12. Gates

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  13. Skyline

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    I haven't had time to read this completely through yet, but I like the graphs included near the beginning.
     
  14. hii

    hii
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    Oh, and sorry if what I said earlier contradicts this, everyone, but I've done some research there seems to be strong evidence that being trans or gay does strong correlate with genes and hormones the fetus is exposed to in the womb. Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared to get in a debate over this, my original point only being that society's constructs of gender are way more exaggerated than the innate gender differences. :slight_smile:

    ---------- Post added 18th Apr 2014 at 09:01 PM ----------

    Okay, I got pretty stressed after this debate. It's was stressful to have my ideas challenged in a public way, especially ones that I wasn't prepared to debate about. My original point wasn't about if being transgender or gay was innate but if there were actually huge innate gender differences.

    But after having my ideas on the former challenged I of course had to research, research, research and there are a lot of new studies that are saying that being transgender or gay is quite possibly decided in the womb.

    So, thanks for that. I haven't actually gotten to speak to a counselor or gender therapist yet. Maybe I should be more quick to point out when I'm uneducated in an area.

    I get way too stressed over being proven wrong, wow. :bang: It's probably good for me though.
     
  15. Gates

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    No worries. I was brought up to debate and I've done quite a bit of research into a number if queer topics so, it was a bit unfair of me. You did well and I'm glad that you were moved to seek more answers. Debates like this are good and while no one wants to appear wrong in public, the fact is that we are all wrong sometimes and that's OK. We can't be experts on everything.

    Good debate. :thumbsup: