Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, and transgender people's brain structures tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as[1]. So, for example, a trans woman like myself who was born male will have a brain structure that resembles that of a cis woman, not a man.
> I know a trans man who, after a few months of testosterone, claimed it was "night and day" in how they felt about and processed the world
This has been my experience as well (except, the opposite direction, obviously). The way I look at it, before I realized I am transgender, when testosterone was the dominant sex hormone in my body, it was like putting the wrong fuel in a car. It caused a whole slew of serious mental health problems. Estrogen has allowed me to think more clearly, and process thoughts, feelings, and emotions like I never could before. I'll never go back.
>Tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as
I hear this claim a lot but I've never actually understood what "resembles" actually means. The brain structures that transgender people have don't match typical male or female brains but how do you determine which brain transgender brains resemble the most? What is the criteria? To me to determine which brain trans brains were more similar to you would have to study a LOT of dimorphic brain structures.
Some structures in transgender brains do resemble their sex or are sort of androgynous and inbetween. So I don't know how accurate trans woman = "resembles" a woman's brain actually is as a sweeping statement. In my experience trans women have rarely acted completely like either gender. I've seen trans women disperportionately engaging in masculine hobbies like computers compared to the average cis woman.
Brains are messy things and the argument of the article linked is reductionist (as are most papers which make hand-wavy assertions that one brain is "similar" to another). MRI studies with small sample sizes such as the one linked are almost always underpowered [1]
All the study conclusively proves is that both trans women and regular women don't react as viscerally to porn as much as the average man. The actual connectivity and structure that yields similarity in activation between trans and cis women may be completely different.
Side note observation, "regular women" can be perceived as insensitive to trans women. I'm not sure what the best term to use is either though, when differentiating between trans and non-trans of the same gender. "Biological women"?
The distinguishing term is cis (born that way) vs trans (hormones, ops etc). Hence I'm a cis male because I was born as one. Had I become one I'd be a trans male. I think that's right.
> "regular women" can be perceived as insensitive to trans women
I know a few trans (mostly t-women) and insensitivity/nastiness is AFAIK not so tied to gender.
'non-trans' works fine and is clearer to most people. 'cisgendered' is also correct, but it has political connotations, eg 'cishet scum'. WikiPedia has some good references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender
I think the insulting part of "cishet scum" is "scum." I definitely see "cis" and occasionally "cishet" as entirely denotative self-identifications in spaces where it's relevant and trans and non-heterosexual folks are at least more visibly represented than in the world at large, and it's neither positive nor negative, it's just what one is.
The phrase "male chauvinist" doesn't mean there's an intrinsic negative connotation in calling someone "male," nor does the phrase "nasty woman" mean it's intrinsically negative to call someone a "woman." (Of course, both terms might be used as insults in context / with tone / etc.)
Trans woman here. I agree that the neuroscience feels kind of flimsy. I would further argue that neuroscience shouldn't be used as an argument in favor of "accept trans women as being women" because, among other things, it can just as quickly be turned around by people who seek to pull the You're Not Really Trans Unless A Doctor Says So card on other trans folks.
We're women because we say we are - and that's really all there is to say about it.
We are disproportionately into things like coding because, growing up, the vast majority of us are socialized the same way as boys would be. Amazingly, it turns out that in a vacuum, the activity of programming a computer isn't actually gendered.
"We're women because we say we are - and that's really all there is to say about it."
It doesn't make any sense for someone else to tell you who you are. How could they know? Of course, if you were autistic or schizophrenic, that would be different...
Anyway, I remember reading an evocative description by a trans man of how testosterone made him feel like a sex crazed monster. Nobody can know for sure if they have the same experience, just like we don't know if the color blue is the same for us.
But it seemed to me that implied one of two things - either he was experiencing what cis males consider normal, and it was horrifying, in which case it was evidence against him being "really" male, or else he was not experiencing what being a cis male is like, in which case it was evidence that administering male hormones may not produce the effect of natural ones.
> in which case it was evidence that administering male hormones may not produce the effect of natural ones.
The goal of trans hormone therapy is to reverse the effects of the hormones of the person's biological sex, so HRT dosage of e.g. testosterone is usually more than the average cis man would produce. It's possible that that much testosterone was too much for the person you mentioned to handle, especially for his body not being used to it, or that he just got prescribed for more than he should have taken. (He could've also gotten it from the black market, in which case it would almost definitely be an incorrect dosage.)
Other cultures as in what? Far as I can tell, the best predictor of female participation in technical work is poverty. In rich countries with free women, engineering tends to sit around 90% male, and nursing tends to sit around 90% female.
The freer and richer women are, the more likely they are to be found in stereotypical fields.
A culture having "less issues with this" seems to be strongly associated with that culture having conservative views and more socioeconomic issues. I see more women programmers coming out of conservative poor Asian countries than progressive wealthy Nordic countries. I get the impression women are pushed into programming for reasons of economic stress or incentives in countries where less of a programming gender gap exists. To me if a country having less of a gender gap in programming implies either sexism or economic stress.
You can really interpret the prevalence of trans women in programming as being related to nurture or nature. The data point in a vacuum doesn't obviously point to either conclusion.
I'm of the impression that this is a misconception. 50 years ago, "programmer" was a different job. Imagine if executives were just called secretaries now and that's a decent analogy for what I think happened to programmers and architects.
I'm of the impression that back in 1959 when COBOL was released, with a team of 7 designers with 3 women on it, based off the groundwork laid by Grace Hopper, that the technical skill required to be a programmer was actually much higher, and that the women involved in coding were making very technical decisions about that field.
Back then programming was basically applied mathematics, a field with many women. Today programming is gluing together components in order to build systems which is much more similar to engineering, a field with few women.
There are still many women among those who program mathematics (statisticians etc), just that they are usually not called programmers. Also there is much less demand for people who can program math than people who can glue together libraries and create crud apps, so even if all math programmers are included in the statistics they would get dwarfed by the app programmers.
Yeah, I'm of the impression that the intellect required to do software now is much lower - no need to understand bits and bytes or to do math, just sling a bunch of libraries together with glue code from stack over flow and voila a ML system to categorize trouble tickets. Understanding the distinction between the reals and the IEEE double floats is alas long since vanished.
I'm the antithesis of an expert in this. If someone has better information, I'm sure you'll let me know. What I've picked up thus far as the consistent physical differences between male and female brains are:
1. Dominant synapse connection direction. Males typically have more front to back connections than side to side. This may explain why females typically are better at multi-tasking, and males are typically more focused.
2. Testosterone in the womb enlarges the 3d manipulation part of the brain.
3. Testosterone in the womb has some connection to sexuality. In particular, women typically show signs of arousal towards sex without any filter (ie, animals, same gender, w/e). Typical males will show no signs of arousal to certain things (typically other males). Also, twins boys have a significantly greater likelihood of homosexuality (less testosterone to go around).
There's plenty of other differences I'm sure, and many of these may not be true. But this is what I've noted thus far.
"Also, twins boys have a significantly greater likelihood of homosexuality (less testosterone to go around)."
Is the theory that male homosexual=less testosterone really more accepted than male homosexual=more testosterone? I feel like the latter has been argued extensively.
As I recall from the lecture by Robert Sapolsky, researcher can look at a preserved brain and determine with a fairly good accuracy if the brain came from a woman or a man. Experiments has then show that for transgender people the same is true for the gender the brains person identified as, including for people who has not undergone any hormone treatment.
I would have to rewatch those lectures to see if he gave any direct examples of markers, numbers, or sample size.
Is the size alone enough to do that with a "fairly good accuracy"? I can't help thinking of all the deep learning tests that inadvertently found unwanted shortcuts.
When it comes to brains, there is far more variation, on pretty much anything you choose to measure, within the group of 'men' or 'women', then there is between the groups.
As far as cognitive empathy, sorry fellow men, we can't blame our lack of cognitive empathy on biology, it's probably pure socialization/education. And we can get better at it by trying/learning/practicing.
There's more variation of height within male and female groups than between groups, but still you can confidently say that on average males are taller; so "far more variation within the group" doesn't say much
> can't blame our lack of cognitive empathy on biology, it's probably pure socialization/education
Any evidence?
A study linked from one of your links says: "Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain."
So it looks like there are, actually, differences.
Also, it is kind of assumed that we need more cognitive empathy; but why exactly, and how much is too much?
Dick Swaab of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience is a pioneer in the neuroscience underlying gender identity. In the mid-1990s, his group examined the postmortem brains of six transgender women and reported that the size of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc or BNSTc), a sexually dimorphic area in the forebrain known to be important to sexual behavior, was closer to that of cisgender women than cisgender men.[1] A follow-up study of autopsied brains also found similarities in the number of a certain class of neurons in the BSTc between transgender women and their cisgender counterparts—and between a transgender man and cisgender men.[2] These differences did not appear to be attributable to the influence of endogenous sex hormone fluctuations or hormone treatment in adulthood. In another study published in 2008, Swaab and a coauthor examined the postmortem volume of the INAH3 subnucleus, an area of the hypothalamus previously linked to sexual orientation. The researchers found that this region was about twice as big in cisgender men as in women, whether trans- or cisgender.[3]
[1] J.-N. Zhou et al., “A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality,” Nature, 378:68-70, 1995.
[2] F.P. Kruijver, “Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus,” J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 85:2034-41, 2000.
[3] A. Garcia-Falgueras, D. Swaab, “A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity,” Brain, 131:3132-46, 2008.
I wonder if something like an MRI could allow medical professionals or diagnostic systems to automatically categorize this non-invasively?
When we reach a world where everyone has more star trek level medical care then a true survey of the population may allow for everyone to have improved lives.
Perhaps. I'm a little concerned that if this approach is used for diagnostics that it becomes another form of gatekeeping. (i.e. someone is transgender but denied treatment because their brain scans come up as cis.)
There's a dark side of everything, but there are people who believe they want to transition who then find out it doesn't help when they do. Being able to diagnostically assess the likelihood that it's the correct treatment would be good for everyone.
That would have to be an incredibly precise test though; if someone is in denial and you tell them "This test says there's only a 5% chance you're right", they will probably stay in denial.
So, that gets complicated. What if medicine finds a certain physical trait that is prevalent in 90% of cases where people are trans? What does that mean for the other 10%? Odds are good their lives just got WAY harder. Coupled with a history of being mistreated by the medical industry, there's quite a lot of (rational, imo) fear in the trans community about medical diagnoses.
Other commenters are linking to _studies_, I think parent is asking if GP had a _test_ done for them that specifically showed them their brain structure. Big difference between a study and a consumer-/patient- ready product. At least, studies could mean the product is forthcoming.
When I search "brain structure test" I get IQ/personality quiz web pages. "brain structure medical procedure" gets me general information on brain anatomy and glossaries of neurosurgical terms. "{gender|trans} identity brain structure procedure" similarly returns scholarly information.
Nothing on a procedure I could schedule with my doctor, but maybe it's easier to ask my doctor than use Google. Maybe someone with better Google-fu could suggest better keywords. Has anyone done this or asked their doctor about it? I know I'd be interested in what my brain looks like in this regard!
If someone is left-handed, and left-handedness has been shown to be very strongly correlated with a different brain structure, would you challenge them similarly if they state that they have a different brain structure because they are left handed?
Do you need to personally participate in studies to know anything about your body?
That study is worthless based on the small sample size. I'm also a trans woman and I hate when this study is brought up. I think brain development could be a reason but I also think how a person is raised could play into being transgender for some people. Our generation will likely never know for certain. I just don't think there is an all encompassing answer for everyone.
I don't understand the matter of it either. If you badly feel you're in the wrong body and you want it changed, I'm ok with that. I don't see any other reasons are needed.
I think your accepting outlook of the situation will be the popular approach for the new generation from what I've observed. The "other reasons" have been pushed because of non-transgender people rejecting transgender people. There is a culture of God made you whatever sex and that's how it must be in your life. These people have had a very negative impact on transgender people and resulted in accepting/ trans people seeking "other reasons" in an attempt of more justification that's really unnecessary.
>>>If you badly feel you're in the wrong body and you want it changed, I'm ok with that. I don't see any other reasons are needed.
Should this apply to other physical/genetic characteristics as well, such as ethnicity? Should Caucausians be able to change their physical appearance (via tanning, etc...) to Native American, identify as such (cough Elizabeth Warren cough), and then be entitled to any/all social benefits legally accorded to Native American people?
What sort of implications would that have, internationally? Say someone has their body altered to appear Han Chinese, and then they go to China, expecting to be treated as a Chinese (or at least an ABC), because that's how they "identify". What are the second and third-order implications for how the world views American leadership?
> Should this apply to other physical/genetic characteristics as well, such as ethnicity? Should Caucausians be able to change their physical appearance (via tanning, etc...) to Native American
Let's try...
> Should this apply to other physical/genetic characteristics...
you can change your physical characteristics, you can't (that I can think of) change your genetic ones.
> ...such as ethnicity?
Ethnicity, hmm. I don't know how to define that, so from wiki:
"An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry or on similarities such as common language or dialect, history, society, culture or nation.[1][2] Ethnicity is often used synonymously with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism, and is separate from but related to the concept of races"
Unless you pin down what you mean by ethnicity, I can't even begin answer. It's too broad.
Ethnicity seems a social construction - I know a (lapsed) jew and she's ethnically one, but you couldn't tell from native english from looking at her (same as I can often tell a pole by looking, or a turk, or even some londoners), so is she because she was born one, or isn't she because she gave it up, or what?
But, maybe. After all an american indian guy decided to 'identify' as a tiger <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking_Cat>. While that's a very odd decision to me, I'm not going to step in and physically stop him. Would you?
> cough Elizabeth Warren cough
plesse leave politics out of this, ta, it's complex enough.
> What sort of implications would that have, internationally? [...]. What are the second and third-order implications for how the world views American leadership?
What?? Seriously? This is about people who feel they don't fit their body and you try to drag in this?And why do you assume I'm from the US?
To try to answer your question differenty, are you suggesting that we don't necessarily do 'the right thing' morally because people are watching?
Final question, have you ever met a trans person? Or understand what they can choose to undergo because they feel so wrong - they can go through a lot, it's not an easy thing.
>>>Unless you pin down what you mean by ethnicity, I can't even begin answer.
Let's go with common genealogy or phenotype.
>>>Ethnicity seems a social construction
So in the absence of society you would not be able to physically distinguish between these two gentlemen [1][2] and would classify them as the same ethnicity? You cannot discern objectively-measurable distinctions between the appearances of these two faces? Facial recognition software demonstrates otherwise. [3] Every face has measurements, which cluster with other similar faces. I doubt it would be difficult to map each of those clusters with what we consider an "ethnicity".
>>>But, maybe. After all an american indian guy decided to 'identify' as a tiger <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking_Cat>. While that's a very odd decision to me, I'm not going to step in and physically stop him. Would you?
Did he receive any LEGAL benefits normally given to large predatory felines? If no, then intervention isn't required. If yes, then absolutely I would oppose it. "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken" - Tyler Durden.
>>plesse leave politics out of this, ta, it's complex enough.
Regardless of her politics, Elizabeth Warren is a public, high-profile figure and a perfect example of an American using their "internal" identity for legal gain. Rachel Dolezal is an alternative example. Both demonstrate that these aren't really hypothetical issues, but present-day issues crossing the spectrum of not only social issues but also medical and cosmetic technology (elective, plastic surgery, skin treatments, etc...).
>>>This is about people who feel they don't fit their body and you try to drag in this?
I try to keep a long-term, macroscopic view on social issues. But honestly, if I were to elaborate on my position it would be a long, kinda-rambling mess, so I'll table that point of the discussion.
>>>And why do you assume I'm from the US?
Oddly enough I'm usually fighting the same bias inherent in a US (and especially SFV/SFBA-heavy) website. I'm American but don't live there. So....touché on that one.
>>>Final question, have you ever met a trans person?
Of course. I live in Asia. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in a bar in Thailand, Philippines, or the bigger cities in Japan has been hit on by a trans person.
>>>Or understand what they can choose to undergo because they feel so wrong - they can go through a lot, it's not an easy thing.
Every human is operating within the restrictions of their physical form. My rackmate at OCS was a short dude (like 5'4") and years later he told me he considered leg extension surgery....the same kind that killed the guy in [4]). Short guys experience all sorts of emotional abuse and nobody really gives two shits about them either. Should my friend declare that he is 6'1" because he FEELS taller? Should we update all of his government documents and forms of identification as such? Of course not. Feelings are ephemeral, fleeting, and subjective. Step off a cliff and say to yourself "I FEEL like I shouldn't fall...I identify as a bird." Does gravity comply? No. Life is hard. Get harder.
Most trans people I know have committed suicide when they cannot "successfully" transition and for matching their identity (one's identity is very personal & social in life).
I can only imagine there's a group of short people that wish they were tall and commit suicide. I personally have never had someone tell me they were so distraught about being short that they were considering suicide. Although if it were the case "I would be alright" if medical professionals found it necessary to do a surgery for making the person taller and so the suicidal ideation goes away. I know some midgets have committed suicide and find it sad because in the future we likely will be able to prevent a person developing into a small skeleton.
Social dynamics about how a person looks matters. I think society would be better if surgery wasn't considered such a taboo by people thinking that most of the time the surgeries are pointless. Many people rebound to a greater person when they fix something visual about them and that has somehow held them back in life.
Limitations are "going away" with the outcome of science progressing in the medical community. Similar to religious bigots decreasing in numbers but they do enough damage on their way out.
This is a solid and constructive answer and I'd love to go into it in detail but I won't have time. I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to do justice to it, but let me try.
> So in the absence of society you would not be able to physically distinguish between these two gentlemen [1][2] and would classify them as the same ethnicity?
They have different phenotypes, and are clearly distinguishable visually. Now, if they were brought up in the same place (say in the same town in the US), and both met a blind person, would the blind person be able to tell the difference?
Some white people choose to turn a darker colour with a tan - if they could go completely black, would it matter? (other features wouldn't change of course, but you see my point).
That's not a good answer, so let me try a different one. To me ethnicity matters because people choose to make it matter. The difference between a cis- and trans-woman does not matter to me, but it seems to matter to you. These things matter only if you choose to let them matter. And a few weeks ago I asked a trans girl out because I like her (answer: no. As bloody usual).
> Did he receive any LEGAL benefits normally given to large predatory felines? If no, then intervention isn't required. If yes, then absolutely I would oppose it.
More likely, did he lose human benefits and be eligible to be shot or put in a zoo? That's a good point, well taken!
> Elizabeth Warren [...] "internal" identity for legal gain
Legal gain? Didn't think she got anything except some vague cachet due to american indians being kewl. And because that is IMO crap because such identity is meaningless to me, she gets no cachet from me and IMO should get none from anyone else.
> Rachel Dolezal
Yep. But pretending to be black only mattered because it matters in US society.
> Both demonstrate that these aren't really hypothetical issues, but present-day issues crossing the spectrum of not only social issues but also medical and cosmetic technology (elective, plastic surgery, skin treatments, etc...).
True. And maybe I'm sidestepping the issue, but it only matters because people think it matters. Being a cis- or trans-woman only matters if people care. I don't, and I don't see why it should to anyone else (I'm not saying it shouldn't, I just don't see why it should).
> But honestly, if I were to elaborate on my position it would be a long, kinda-rambling mess, so I'll table that point of the discussion.
My position is as above - I don't care - but it would be great to sit down and talk with you.
> Every human is operating within the restrictions of their physical form [...]
Good point.
> Short guys experience all sorts of emotional abuse and nobody really gives two shits about them either
Actually I'm surprised at that. Once children grow into adults, they usually judge people more on what's inside than out. But again, it's what society thinks, and if it didn't care, it wouldn't matter.
Now for some easy ones:
> Should my friend declare that he is 6'1" because he FEELS taller?
No
> Should we update all of his government documents and forms of identification as such?
if he got surgically taller, yes, otherwise no.
I think you point is if a bloke feels like a woman, is he immediately one? I don't know. If he got surgery + hormones and transitioned, then yes.
But I can elaborate on that a bit. One person I know is becoming a guy. She prefers to be called 'he' but recognises that they don't look like one so doesn't mind when 'she' slips out. As they look like a woman but prefer to be referred to as a bloke, I will do what she prefers, but you would, or you wouldn't? I'd call it bad manners to go against their wishes and hurt their feeling.
Someone I knew referred to a very effeminate guy as 'it', as they weren't in his view male or female, so: 'it'. That pissed a few of us off.
It's about feelings. So to your next point...
> Feelings are ephemeral, fleeting, [...]
I disagree. Briefly, I had a large chunk of my life wrecked with clinical depression. That's pure 'feeling' gone wrong. YOu cannot imagine how much that hurts. Feelings are the core of our being, that distinguishes us from philosophical zombies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie Feelings are all their is that matters, because without feelings, there is nothing. We are computers.
> No. Life is hard. Get harder.
Many years ago I knew a woman who lost both twins at birth. Suppose that tragedy (she was suicidal. BTW nothing ephemeral or brief about that) could have been avoided medically, do we do that, or do we say to her "toughen up" and let them die?
Obviously we change what we can for the better. Centuries ago we lived with arthritis, gout, migraines... now far less so because we can do something about it.
So why should the feeling of being born into the wrong body type be different? See sysbin's answer for why (IMO) it isn't.
OK, I'm not going to take this much further because this whole subject is frankly going to take a day of discussion for both of us which don't have. I do not think you're wrong, I'm just trying to understand your view, and my answer above is... not good, I appreciate that, but it's my best shot. BTW, I really did find your answer measured and thoughtful.
There was a really nice video that supports your point on youtube back in 2013. A lady scientist was doing a talk in a small european country about gender in rats. She found she could get male rats to 'present' and female rats to mount if she messed with 3 distinct moments of hormonal gender influence. One in the womb, one as a young child and one point at puberty. She went on to describe how male rats prefer risky behaviour because they beeline for cheese in the middle of a pool of water on an island and how female rats are more risk averse and swim around the outside edge first.
I have found it impossible to find that video anymore. I don't know why we have to rely on questionable studies when there has been much better work been done and now black-holed.
Depending on the study, 30%-85% of young people who identify as trans will desist by adulthood if not medically transitioned. Do their brains change back to their birth sex when that happens?
"I know a person" is a typical response from the noveau pseudo scientific trans movement, no one really understands this condition yet, and hopefully science can figure it out, although science around this topic has been shut down by the "progressive" movement.
It breaks the site guidelines to post shallow dismissals of other people's experience, so please don't. Taking HN threads into ideological flamewar is even worse, so please don't either.
Please don't respond to a bad comment by taking the thread further into flamewar. Down that path lies wreckage, regardless of who's right and who's wrong. And it breaks the site guidelines as well. As they say, the thing to do with egregious comments is to flag them and/or to email hn@ycombinator.com—not to feed them by replying.
Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, and transgender people's brain structures tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as[1]. So, for example, a trans woman like myself who was born male will have a brain structure that resembles that of a cis woman, not a man.
> I know a trans man who, after a few months of testosterone, claimed it was "night and day" in how they felt about and processed the world
This has been my experience as well (except, the opposite direction, obviously). The way I look at it, before I realized I am transgender, when testosterone was the dominant sex hormone in my body, it was like putting the wrong fuel in a car. It caused a whole slew of serious mental health problems. Estrogen has allowed me to think more clearly, and process thoughts, feelings, and emotions like I never could before. I'll never go back.
1. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/research-on-the-transgend...