The notion that “gender identity” is brain-based and innate has captured the political left. This article explains how to debunk transgender "brain sex" conjecture.
I agree with you that the entire debate boils down to whether people have an innate, unchangeable inner characteristic called “gender” that can be different from their physical sex. If you accept that premise, so many other aspects of gender ideology follow. It’s a very clever tactic that they treat this premise as an implicit fact, generally not stating it or allowing it to be scrutinized, but then building an entire belief system on it.
I have to ask them, do you also have internal versions of other physical characteristics, like height, or skin color? Is it possible that I was meant to be born in a tall body, even though I’m short? If I wear shoe lifts all the time and demand people call me tall and redefine the words tall and short to mean how I feel inside instead of my physical height, and demand big and tall stores carry my size, have I changed anything about the reality of my height? And will I be more or less dissatisfied with my height after doing all that than if I had come to terms with being a short person? And did I make the world worse by removing language that allows people to correctly size clothing, medication, and safety equipment?
How would one even define a male brain other than as a brain that is in a male body? If a brain in a male body has a certain characteristic then by definition it is a valid characteristic for a male brain to have.
Great comment. Due to my seemingly innate love of "Bossa nova" I've long joked with friends that it must have been some sort of a cosmic mistake that I was born blue collar in Detroit in 1952, when I should have been born middle class in Rio instead. Apparently there must be some sort of "Brazilian Bossa nova brain" that an unsuspecting person can be 'born with' : )
I remember a quip from the fishing editor of Sports Afield magazine from way back in my youth in the 1960's that somehow always stuck with me, and now seems highly pertinent. In response to a letter to the editor he made the comment that as a white male - "You could 'call me' an Ituri Forrest Pygmy - but that wouldn't make me one." I would update that quote for the current "gender-wars" to include that by the same token - "I could 'call myself' an Ituri Forrest Pygmy - but that wouldn't make me one either."
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
Of course you have internal, brain based representations of your body. It would be impossible to move without them. Areas associated with embodiment and self perception are the same regions found to be gender discordant. There's a vast body of evidence for a biological etiology of trans that goes well beyond brain scan data including genetic and epigenetic research, familial and twin occurrence research, research into xx/xy chimeras, animal and primate studies where they have predictably manipulated gendered sexual behavior (lordosis vs. mounting) by giving non-natal hormones at critical developmental periods.
Like any other biological system, the brain and how the brain/body relate can be prone to error. Claiming this isnt possible, or cant happen is absolutely absurd and those who claim it show their ignorance of many separate avenues of research providing clear evidence for a biological etiology of a phenomenon that occurs for millions of people across the world and has existed in all of recorded history.
Certainly your brain is aware of your body - as it actually is. But believing you’re tall when you’re short, or have different color eyes than you actually do - that’s just wishful thinking. In any other way, if a person doesn’t like their body we preach self-acceptance. We recognize that obsessing over wanting to be thinner, or taller, or have straight hair, or no freckles, or have a different skin color, is not emotionally healthy, and we should be proud of and love ourselves as we are. But, if we are dissatisfied with our bodies in this one very specific way suddenly the path to mental health is not acceptance but medications and surgeries to change the body? I don’t believe that.
The only way you can say what a male brain looks like is to scan brains of people who are male. How else would you define a male brain?
And if being trans is biologically determined, what explains the 4000% increase in teen girls identifying as trans boys over the past decade? Are there hundreds of thousands of women of every previous generation who are actually “men” on the inside and don’t know it?
You can throw around red herrings like chimeras (an extraordinarily small percentage of the population and completely irrelevant as no one claims that trans people are chimeras) but you can’t make your argument make sense. I can’t be born the wrong sex any more than I can be born the wrong race. You are what you are, and believing you should be something other than what you actually are is a rejection of yourself, and is not emotionally healthy.
Your brain/body mapping is a gender dimorphic brain structure set during specific gestational windows. This structure is permanent. You are clearly uneducated on the neurobiology of gender, the multiple biological etiologies of gender identity/dysphoria all impacting the brain structures during this critical developmental window. You are also ignorant about the frequency of chimeras in the population which by some estimates is as high as 5-15% of the population. We simply don't diagnose it often because unless there are obvious phenotypically chimeric features, there's no reason to, and no way to determine which genetic samples might contain chimeric DNA. Go read more.
There's not structural component that maps the body to a specific race since different races don't have structurally different body maps, only gender does, obviously. There are many reasons for an increase in trans identification, mostly having to do with more accepting conditions, especially for trans men (genetic females). Big surprise more people come out when they wont be condemned, disowned, or made to feel like social pariahs. There are some instances of non-trans people claiming that identity without meeting the diagnostic criteria, but that doesn't somehow invalidate actual trans identities, it simply is cause for enforcing existing diagnostics and standards of care to exclude comorbid factors before signing off on medical interventions.
There's no solution to persistent, proven severe gender dysphoria besides transition, and claiming there are psychological ways to treat it is tantamount to promoting conversion therapy. You cannot change a permanently set brain structure with psychotherapy. I'm guessing you don't think sexual orientation is changeable, so why do you think gender identity is? These are both set gestationally with DNA, hormones, and other causal factors implicated setting up unchangeable brain structures that impact self body perception.
Just say you wont, and haven't read any of the body of evidence, instead of pretending to know what you are talking about.
There is no diagnostic test for transgender. They can’t do a brain scan or a blood test and say “yes, this person has a brain that would benefit from being in a different body.” Your brain is part and parcel of your body, containing all the same chromosomes that are in every other cell in your body. There’s a lot of variation in brains, though, and some traits might be more common in males or females, but so what? If I’m a female who likes football or a male who likes pink, does that make me actually the opposite sex? Of course not! It makes me a woman who likes football or a man who likes pink. Sex is defined by biology, not by whether you conform to arbitrary societal stereotypes. If you grew up on a deserted island and were never exposed to any gender-based expectations about how males and females should dress, look, or act, and you just did whatever your genuine preference were with no concept of whether other people thought it was appropriate for your sex, would you still feel like your body wasn’t right? I really doubt it.
If a trans person grew up on a deserted island, they would still have gender dysphoria. The feeling of misalignment comes from an actual misalignment in the areas of the brain responsible for mapping the body. They would feel their body was wrong just like any trans person growing up in normal circumstances. This is why even as a young child I felt gender dysphoria even before really understanding different sex bodies. My earliest memories (3-4) are about feeling my body was wrong, that I shouldn't have a penis, that I wasnt a boy inside.
Gender identity and dysphoria has to do with first and foremost the physically gendered body, not presentation, what colors you like, etc. It is a deep and permenant sense of discordance between what your mind expects your body tobe, and what your body actually is.
Why would it be possible for your brain to expect your body to be different in this one specific way, but not any other way? Height can also be variable based on environmental conditions both during gestation and during early life. So is it possible that due to hormonal or nutritional conditions you end up with a short brain in a tall body? Can your sense of how tall you are develop independently from your actual height? Would you keep bumping your head on things because your brain is “mapped” to a smaller body?
I think that at a very young age, we all unconsciously absorb messages from society about how males and females are “supposed” to be. Some of these are based on averages, some are based on cultural traditions, some are even contradictory. At some point a child (or adult) may say to themselves “That isn’t me”. The stricter and more toxic and more confusing the gender roles that you absorb, the more likely this will happen. If you are told the only valid way to be a man is to be John Wayne, many boys may feel that’s not who they are. So they conclude (still subconsciously) that they must be the opposite sex. It’s no accident that for many years, while women’s roles in society were expanding and changing while men were still held to rigid expectations about clothing, displays of emotion, and suitably masculine interests, almost all transgender people were born males. And now in the time of ubiquitous online porn and social media influencers where women are treated as display objects with no real personalities, the pendulum has swung the other direction and the born females outnumber the born males several times over, and most of them arrive at this conclusion not as young children but as they reach puberty and become subject to a million negative expectations and stereotypes around teenage girls.
When society tells you your internal characteristics don’t match what’s expected for someone with your external characteristics, you have three choices - try to change your personality to fit in, try to change your body so that their expectations will match your personality, or tell society to fuck off. By definition, if a person has a certain personality trait, it is a valid trait for someone with their physical characteristics to have.
Don’t get me wrong - you have the right to dress and present yourself however you want, and to pursue happiness in whatever way doesn’t infringe on others’ rights. I might think it’s a bad idea, but I also think facial tattoos are a bad idea and I still believe people have the right to get them. Clearly you have a lot invested in your beliefs and I don’t expect to change your mind. But I have never seen any convincing, unbiased science that convinces me that trans people’s brains are measurably different than anyone else of their sex prior to medicalization, outside of the normal variations that occur in brains.
If a trans man had been born on a desert island populated with only girly feminine women, never saw a man, never saw a picture of a man, never heard anyone even talk about, even refer to, a man:
Would they have "a deep and permenant sense of discordance between what your mind expects your body tobe, and what your body actually is"?!
Can I be cat gender? How about autism gender? Can my gender change daily or weekly? I am sorry that you suffer from GD. It must be grueling. If you were on a deserted island you would not be thinking your body is wrong. You would only know that one body.
If all of these studies that you want people to educate ourselves on existed you would post them here.
It's very easy to say 'educate yourself' and never provide an iota of evidence to back up your crackpot theories. If you really wanted people to understand you'd be acknowledging the fetishism that underlies most of male 'transgender' behaviour.
Alfred Kinsey faked his data, the medical industry was in big tobacco’ pocket, there was Tuskegee, lobotomies, thalidomide... I really don’t give much of a damn what they have to say, without that historical qualification. For that matter, they’re not being open to the extent academics with axes to grind and activist taking over their institutions play a role in what they say and do. First feminist, then homosexuals, now this. Just a bit too convenient.
How many more DSM changes do we need to show that.
Not sure why you can't simply do a Google Scholar search yourself. Probably because you don't actually care to read the vast body of neuroanatomical, genomic, and hormonal science that has important things to say about this topic and points directly to biological etiology for trans people as well as homosexuality. Instead, it seems you would rather stick dogmatically to conclusions you arrived at through emotional means and insist others do this work for you while having no intention of engaging with the science in an intellectually honest way. Here's a starting point if I'm wrong and you actually want to learn more. There are dozens of others beyond this, the research in this field is extensive and spans more than 50 years.
Quite an interesting article regarding some likely social-cultural influences on epigenetic development.
The researchgate article on macrochimeric tissue discordance is purely suggesting a hypothesis for potential research.
The Nature article says that prior to CHT, the program could identify TW as male at 87.5% vs 93.33% for CG males. Personally, I'd be more concerned at the loss of cortical thickness that CHT appears to cause. It also says that the differences in post-CHT males do not correlate with the brains of CG females (I may have missed it but it also doesn't seem to mention whether the TWs are same-sex attracted as they often tend to have brains similar to their female counterparts).
"...There's no solution to persistent, proven severe gender dysphoria besides transition..."
So it must also be true that:
"There's no solution to persistent, proven anorexia, or other body dysmorphia, besides transition by amputating a healthy limb, or liposuction and stomach stapling of starving bag of bones.."
"...There's no solution to persistent, proven severe gender dysphoria besides transition..."
But earlier you said:
"...There's a vast body of evidence for a biological etiology of trans that goes well beyond brain scan data including genetic and epigenetic research, familial and twin occurrence research, research into xx/xy chimeras, animal and primate studies where they have predictably manipulated gendered sexual behavior (lordosis vs. mounting) by giving non-natal hormones at critical developmental periods."
"Like any other biological system, the brain and how the brain/body relate can be prone to error."
So why is the "solution" to, or "cure" for, the errors to poison a child with the WRONG hormones, AND to MUTILATE IT?
Why not use the RIGHT hormones for the "assigned" at birth body instead of mutilating it when you can't change its sex.
Or even its appearance adequately in most cases.
"Claiming this isnt possible, or cant happen is absolutely absurd and those who claim it show their ignorance of many separate avenues of research providing clear evidence..."
"....by some estimates is as high as 5-15% of the population. We simply don't diagnose it often.... there's no reason to, and no way to determine which genetic samples might contain chimeric DNA. Go read more."
I have one question: what is “gender”? Seriously. You’ve used it many times here but I don’t know what it is in context. Do you mean sex? If you don’t mean sex can you define it?
Not buying it. Since trans ideology entered school’s curriculum, there are enormous upticks. Take it out of the schools and watch the trans fad away. Celebrate bring a butch lesbian or feminine boy and more trans identification goes away. Treat the underlying mental health issue and even more stop identifying as trans. Stop asking autistic kids for their gender and now we are back down to men with fetishes. .01 of population. It’s that simple
No such thing as 'Trans' kids, only the gay, autistic, abused or traumatised children of homophobic or Transhausen by Proxy parents. You should read the book by Hannah Barnes or the Cass Report, but note that Cass, who had a relative who transitioned in later life (and of course it did not influence her report !) believes in transitioning kids if their distress with their sex/sexual orientation/body warrants it.
"There's a vast body of evidence for a biological etiology of trans that goes well beyond brain scan data including genetic and epigenetic research, familial and twin occurrence research, research into xx/xy chimeras, animal and primate studies where they have predictably manipulated gendered sexual behavior (lordosis vs. mounting) by giving non-natal hormones at critical developmental periods."
So you're saying people aren't born in the wrong body.
Or as some of the founders of the cult say, with a differently gendered angel.
But that you were born in the right body.
But something went wrong with the non-natal hormones it was subjected to at critical developmental periods..
Is there a vast body of research in many separate avenues of research into correcting these errors instead of poisoning and mutilating kids?
Or are the cult leaders more interested in poisoning and mutilating kids than fixing the errors!
What is different between people who believe they were born in the wrong body and a 16kg 16 year old girl believing she is obese and needs urgent liposuction. It is a mental health issue. Unicorns are never lonely because there is always a 'Trans' child ready to jump on their back and chase the rainbow. Like Gender Identity there is no such think as Unicorn droppings, so 'Trans' kids can't step in them or have to sweep them up. What a wonderful fantasy life.
Delusions are features of psychotic or schizophrenic illnesses, as well as somatic map or brain structure imperfectiions or neurotransmitter chemistry defects. The hallmark is always an inability to perceive and operate within the bounds of reality, often with emotionally traumatic or even dangerous behaviors resulting from the disconnect.
Here are some example delusions to see a pattern.
You meet a man who delusionally believes he has one leg. It is a long a standing belief, which came about near puberty, he sincerely believes it, and it causes skelosdysphoria which impacts daily life. However, anyone can see that he was born with two legs and is merely delusional. The delusion is caused by an imperfect somatic mapping. It has no cure. It is a one-in-a-million cognitive defect. The treatment is to help him learn ways to not allow then delusion to dominate his thoughts. Without support the man may commit suicide, or as he is continually confronted with the fake leg attempt to remove it with fatal results. Affirming the delusion only strengthens the delusion and increases the drive to commit dangerous acts.
You meet a man who delusionally believes his genitals are not his. It is a long a standing belief, which came about near puberty, he sincerely believes it, and it causes genitodysphoria which impacts daily life. However, anyone can see that he was born with genitals which have not been replaced and is merely delusional. The delusion is caused by an imperfect somatic mapping. It has no cure. It is a one-in-a-million cognitive defect. The treatment is to help him learn ways to not allow then delusion to dominate his thoughts. Without support the man may commit suicide, or as he is continually confronted with the genitals attempt to remove them with fatal results. Affirming the delusion only strengthens the delusion and increases the drive to commit dangerous acts, or strike out against those who don’t believe the delusion.
You meet a man who delusionally believes he is a woman, he has menses, a womb, can bear children and lactate. It is a long a standing belief, which came about near puberty, he sincerely believes it, and it causes sexdysphoria which impacts daily life. However, anyone can see that he was born male and is merely delusional. The delusion is caused by an imperfect somatic mapping. It has no cure. It is a one-in-a-million cognitive defect. The treatment is to help him learn ways to not allow then delusion to dominate his thoughts. Without support the man may commit suicide, or as they are continually confronted with the fact that no internal organs are female may resort to self-mutilation with fatal results. Affirming the delusion only strengthens the delusion and increases the drive to commit dangerous acts, or strike out against those who don’t believe the delusion.
You meet a man who delusionally believes he has wings and can fly that he can levitate his body and move through the air flapping them. It is a long a standing belief, which came about near puberty, he sincerely believes it, and it causes aerodysphria which impacts daily life. However, anyone can see that he cannot fly and nis merely delusional. The delusion is caused by an imperfect somatic mapping. It has no cure. It is a one-in-a-million cognitive defect. The treatment is to help him learn ways to not allow then delusion to dominate his thoughts. Without support he may commit suicide or attempt to fly with fatal results. Affirming the delusion only strengthens the delusion and increases the drive to commit dangerous acts, or strike out against those who don’t believe the delusion.
You meet a man who delusionally believes he is an extremely attractive sexually alluring promiscuous woman. It is a long a standing belief, which came about near puberty, he sincerely believes it, and it causes pornosdysphoria which impacts daily life. However, anyone can see that he is a man. It has no cure. It is a one-in-a-million cognitive defect. The treatment is to help him learn ways to not allow then delusion to dominate his thoughts. Without support he may commit suicide or attempt to act out being a prostitue in risky situations with fatal effects. Affirming the delusion only strengthens the delusion and increases the drive to commit dangerous acts, or strike out against those who don’t believe the delusion.
These errors cannot be corrected, they are neuroanatomical structures set during gestation. They are "in the wrong body" insofar as their brain mapping isnt for their sex, but instead for the opposite sex (either completely or partially). So you either put value in the primacy of mind, or you see the body as the only truth. That's up to you.
Bingo. The mind can heal, if actually treated with respect. Instead of telling these kids ‘hey let us take this sawzaw to yo crotch or you gonna keel yoself’... maybe the ‘experts’, could tell them.. the truth. The mind and the body are meant to work together, and trying to over-throw the body just because someone likes the color pink, is evil.
Why the eagerness to ‘fix’ the body and not the mind? Because it is a religious agenda, at least for the ring leaders like Foucault or Money, or Kinsey etc.
The mind and the body are the same thing. It’s like space and time. They don’t exist separately, there is only spacetime. So we could call it bodymind but that seems a bit simplistic :)
But it’s true. While it may seem when we are highly conscious that we are a pilot (mind) operating a machine (body), it’s an illusion, and one that breaks constantly.
When we realise there is no body/mind dichotomy all of this goes away. Whatever a man does or wears is by definition something a man does or wears. Not something a woman “pilot” is making a male “machine” do by pulling levers in “her” brain.
We are not in control of our gender identity. As I said it is set during gestation and is immutable. To some extent we can control how much or how little we allow gender dysphoria to impact our lives, but it requires repression/compartmentalization. When I transitioned, it was an immense relief to not be trying to push those feelings down and ignore them (impossible). Learned helplessness is simply being a victim to a situation that is within your ability to control, and for trans people, what we can control is our bodies, not our minds. So we change our bodies to fit our brains, that's all transition is.
Indeed. And what about people who experienced dysphoriain their youth but found that the issue resolved of its own accord later in life? That suggests a great degree of mutability.
Detransitioners detransition for many reasons, some were never trans in the first place, never suffered from gender dysphoria, and thus transition actually created gender dysphoria instead of solving it. Many others detransition because they have been disowned by their family and there is familial/social pressure to detransition. Still others detransition because they are not happy with the extent to which they were able to change their body, perhaps they do not pass, and feel they would rather live with dysphoria than exist in this world as visibly trans and face the hate that comes along with that.
Now looking at these two pieces, all of them exhibited gender dysphoria, although had not isolated the specific cause of that distress. If they were convinced at the time that they were the opposite gender, but later realised they weren't, then doesn't that indicate that gender identity is not immutable? How would you determine who is truly trans if such a high percentage desist? If any kind of psychological investigation is disallowed, how would you determine who should have gender-affirming care and who shouldn't?
You determine it by how long they have had dysphoria, its extent, and by excluding comorbid mental health conditions and external influences. There are clear standards of care for doing this that, if followed, are able to easily tell the difference between someone with actual gender dysphoria, and someone who simply claims it.
So you accept that "some were never trans in the first place, never suffered from gender dysphoria, and thus transition" poisoning and mutilation was (even more) criminal malpractice.
And you also accept that you can "actually create[.] gender dysphoria".
And that transitioning can create problems "instead of solving it".
And that "Many others [..]transition because they have been" pressured by "progressive" teachers, Trans-Activists, mothers with Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy and related mental illnesses, and can't desist or de-transition for fear of being "disowned by their" "community" "/social pressure to [..]transition".
And you also accept that "others detransition because they are not happy with the extent to which they were able to change their body, perhaps they do not pass, and feel they would rather live with dysphoria than exist in this world as visibly trans and face the [self-]hate that comes along with that"!
Transgender identification creates practical problems for the accommodation of women and transwomen, and I'm curious how you think we should handle that.
The whole point of gender-segregated changing rooms, locker rooms, toilets, prisons, rape crisis centers, etc... is to protect women and girls from predatory men. And the whole point of having separate men's and women's sports is to give women the opportunity to compete. There's no prohibition on women in the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, etc... there just aren't any women capable of competing at that level, and so separate leagues were created so that women could have a chance to compete in sports.
The problem is that anybody can say they're transgender.
If I wanted to legally become a woman, all I would need to do is fill out a couple of short forms:
If I had the inclination to do so, I could fill out the forms and send them in, in less than 20 minutes. Legally changing my sex would be easier than doing my taxes. Then I would legally be a woman, and I would be legally entitled to go to the gym or a public swimming pool and shower in the women's locker room if I felt like it.
I think you have to admit that that's pretty messed up. Suppose I were a creep who just got off on making women feel uncomfortable? I'd be legally protected.
If you engage in the brain argument you've already lost. You accepted that there could be a connection between being a male/female and the brain structure. You need to stay on point and remind them that sex is not about the brain but about the roles in reproduction. You are either of the nature to get pregnant or to impregnate. That's it. We might observe differences in brains, height, weight, muscles, hormones, etc. but they are irrelevant when it comes to this classification.
With all due respect, *everything* is about the brain… including sex. I understand your point — and I agree with what you're trying to say — but I think it would be better articulated without dismissing the role of the brain in creating and controlling the behaviors in which we engage. Please take my comment in the kind and collegial manner in which it was intended... Sincerely, Frederick
Very well done description. I will add another angle on the issue. While sex has a binary distribution, males produce small gametes (sperm) and females produce large gametes (eggs), most secondary sex characteristics do not have a binary distribution. For example, men tend to have greater height than women, 176cm for men vs 163 cm for women, as estimated by WHO. We know that some men stand about 163 cm tall, but we don't conclude they have the body of a woman. Similarly, some women stand about 176cm tall, but we don't conclude they have the body of a man. Evolution produces this natural variation, always searching for an adaptive advantage.
Brain structure also has a non-binary distribution but with differences between men and women structures on average. A woman having a brain structure closer to the average for men does not imply she is a man anymore than having a height closer to the average for men does not imply she is a man. It's interesting to know that gay men have a brain structure closer to that of a woman and it may well be correlated with sexual attraction but it doesn't imply anything about the person's sex.
Just a side note: a model of binary dristibution for brain structure presents a problem for those claiming a non-binary identity.
I liken having a non-binary identity to not having an age. I joke that Indiana Jones assured me that non-binary skeletons are instantly recognizable by the complete absence of bones.
Having a non-binary identity simply means that your brain/body mapping was only partially masculinized (for genetic males) or partially masculinized when it shouldnt have been at all (for genetic females), resulting in a gender identity that doesnt neatly fit the binary. Like everything in nature we see a spectrum, a bimodal distribution, with a small percentage of people falling in the middle. It isn't a third gender, it is the middle of both genders.
This is garbage. “Non-binary” is a ridiculous fad that, like Goth, is already fading away as the fad passes. It’s a way for mostly chubby unattractive adolescents to pretend they’re interesting. It’s explicitly child/adolescent focussed and is a rejection of adulthood. Adulthood comes eventually anyway, even if you wear dungarees like a toddler and dye your hair blue like a cartoon character. In schools now kids roll their eyes and say “oh look, they is crying again, them is so dramatic”
A woman having brain regions responsible for mapping the body (somatosensory cortex, putamen and others) that was masculinized when it shouldnt have been, will feel gender dysphoria, because that part of the brain is responsible for mapping a gendered body to a gendered brain. Misalignment causes gender dysphoria and is the biological basis for transgender identity.
I provided some further up in the thread, but there are dozens more out there that have looked at brain sex and the process of how brain/body mapping and sexual orientation happens during gestation and how hormones and other factors influence that development.
The biology teacher at my former high school pushed the “brain sex” theory on her students. Thanks for this rebuttal. Looking forward to your group project.
I can't honestly believe that? How utterly absurd & disingenuous. You are years behind the curve. There are 10's of thousands of kids now claiming to be in the wrong body, 70% of them girls. This indoctrination begins in kindergarten. You need to take a hard look at the current curriculum in all schools in the West.
I could go on & on. Get on YouTube or any other social media & listen to the detransitioners. Look at the lawsuits filed, particularly in the UK & Sweden where this "practice" has now been banned. You speak of "rarity" & are clearly unaware of how many thousands of kids are "transitioning" due to social media, school incitement & egregious mental illness that now proliferates in society. And "neurobiological reality"? Sorry, but that is myth. If you take a hard look you'll see that the LGB community has been co-opted by this train wreck; they do not endorse or support it as can be seen by all the lesbian & gay groups speaking out against grooming. Being same sex attracted is one thing, believing you are born in the wrong body & being nurtured in this madness leads to frankensurgury & permanent sterility & the myth of suicide is what's promoted by this industry, not the kids.
Another factor is the observed phenomenon that old trans people with dementia/Alzheimers are forgetting they're trans and reverting to their original identity:
Weird! You rely heavily on anecdotal evidence All. The. Time. When you think it's in your favor, that is!
But I'm not descending to your level of scientific integrity.
You clearly didn't read the 5 corresponding cited articles. You probably didn't even read beyond the Abstract.
Each study group by itself was too small for statistical analysis, but all taken together, the evidence is convincing enough to warrant mention in this paper.
As the paper mentions, there aren't enough trans elderly with dementia yet to practicably make one big enough study group for one statically-significant study (without spending a LOT of money on travel for the key in-person interviews), but there soon will be.
Me? When did I cite an article stating anecdotal evidence? I occasionally state my own experience as a trans person, is that what you mean? Statistical analysis, do you mean statistical significance?
What's missing from the discussion here is the real engine behind this wave of "trans" kids; this international financial push to disrupt society by disrupting sanity vis a vis "gender ideology". These children are the victims of social contagion & nothing more. From Kindergarten up, kids are indoctrinated to believe they can choose one of many genders, which of course, always funnels down to the opposite gender via surgery & hormones. These children are completely impressionable and, as the pack animals we are, want to fit in & will "identify" with whatever promoted ideology is pushed incl. the insane "critical race" garbage. This is a planned & well financed global initiative to destroy society & sterilize a whole generation of children.
You can't honestly believe this can you? The vast vast majority of LGBT kids are dissuaded, sometimes to the point of being disowned or physically abused from their identity. They are still LGBT despite the external world doing everything it can to disabuse them of the feeling.
Pretending there is some international conspiracy to change kids genders for money is a bizarre conclusion to come to given the rarity of the condition, and the fact that most of the treatments are cheap generic drugs, not exactly a wildly profitable scheme, and one that would require massive coordinated effort and social manipulation on a worldwide scale.
Could you have been convinced to change genders at any point in your youth? Could you have been turned gay? It seems it is you who has been indoctrinated by a moral panic social contagion that completely misrepresents the reality of the situation and the fundamental neurobiological etiology of LGBT identities.
The simplest explanation is the right one. Trans people exist not because of indoctrination, but because there's a huge variety of ways of being, and it makes sense (and is supported by a large body of scientific evidence) that a small percent of the population has a condition whereby their brain/body mapping had an error, and they have a deep sense of misalignment in what their brain expects their body to be, and what it actually is.
Kristin. How can you not be suspicious of big pharma and the medical industrial complex making patients for life. The sharp uptick in my boy a few years. There have always been a small percentage of trans but between social justice warriors gone to far and sad lock down kids on social media it has exploded. The vast medicalization of young people in the US must stop. Take a breath. Let them play with the body they came with. To be alive is to feel discomfort, pain. Nothing fixes that. Adulting is learning how to carry it and find the joy when you can. Medicalizing is for grown ups to decide for themselves. Not youths and teens
If you are suspicious of the size of the issue being created by the medical industrial complex are you equally suspicious of the political focus on this issue when a far greater number of children are impacted by things like poverty and domestic violence. In the UK maybe a few thousand kids are being referred for gender affirming treatment while close to a million suffer from domestic violence and even more suffer from inequality and poverty, yet the political capital invested in one issue far outweighs the others disproportionately. The focus on individual detransitioners is also highly disingenuous, I've yet to see anyone on the GC side of the debate hold up videos of the detransitioners who detransition purely due to the harassment and abuse from other parts of society the received when trying to transition.
As usual, this is a very interesting and thought-provoking essay. However, as I've commented before, some of it is based on inaccurate ideas about biology and psychology. While I agree with all of your basic points, your arguments would be more convincing if they included some of the subtleties of neurobiology and psychology. For instance, debating about whether or not gender identity or gender dysphoria this "biologically based" makes no sense because it can be nothing else but biologically based (as are all thought processes). This is a misunderstanding of the term "biologically based" entertained by both sides of this debate. Likewise, citing the claim that "there is no biological test for gender identity" makes no sense in the light of the fact that there is no single biological test for Alzheimer's or autism. This, too, is a point misunderstood by people on both sides of this debate.
See, for instance:
There is "Biological Evidence for Gender Identity..." but it’s not what you think
Please understand that I'm not saying that any of your argumentation is fundamentally wrong or misguided. I'm just suggesting that your arguments could be made more convincingly.
Thank you again for another wonderful essay. I appreciate your intellectual vigor and commitment to your beliefs. Sincerely, Frederick
The worst part of this is that I 100% believe that this "fact" was taught to this person in school. That's why the Left's cries of "Free Speech!" when it comes to curriculum and library content are so disingenuous.
GI can be likened to the concept of the human soul. The soul remains a constant through life. It is not like the GI metronome: Alice starts off female, claims to be male, then after puberty is female again (as you point out).
I was raised a Catholic, attended a Catholic school, and became an atheist in my mid-20s. My Catholicism was very real and important to me, but I recognized that it was indoctrination, well intended, but false. GI Ideology follows the same false indoctrination model.
How does questioning your identity and sense of self equal indoctrination? As another former Catholic and trans person, the idea is laughable, it's literally the opposite of indoctrination. It's about critically analysing your own identity to better understand it. People telling kids "you have a penis, so are therefore a boy and can't wear a dress" are the ones doing the indoctrination. No trans person wants anyone to transition if it's not necessary and appropriate for them. Detransitioners break our hearts too, maybe even more than yours.
Cut the breaking hearts patronage. There is no such thing as 'trans', only people who do not identify as their birth sex and that is a mental health issue, like a 16kg 16 year old girl believing she is obese and needs urgent liposuction. Stonewall's TWAW was attempted indoctrination. Look up the term in the dictionary. Another rude remark from you gets a block.
1. Have a look at my X/Twitter account @sexnotgi and our initiative @ISBI3. Don't waste my time.
I've read your blog, if you think you are not indoctrinated into a way of thinking I don't think you've looked up that word in a dictionary. Also maybe try to look up the differences between sex and gender, they are different, whether you as a qualified blog owner wants to admit or not. Try somewhere like Yale School of medicines definitions. If you think trans people are analogous with anorexia then you are the one wasting my time. You are either being disingenuous or are just ignorant, either way you need to try and get out of your echo chamber.
Reading means interpreting the words, not just looking at them. A 16kg 16 year old girl believing she is obese and needs urgent liposuction is delusional, like a 'trans' person believing they are the other sex and need surgery and hormones to make them like the other sex.
So being trans is just like having anorexia now? What research have you done to come to that opinion and which journal is it published in so I can read it.
What laws would you need to reference? I'm new here, I found it because I like to challenge myself and read a wide variety of different opinions. Its also a great way to remind myself of how poorly informed some people are, like the ones who "don't believe in gender".
Is the term Woman about sex or gender? I'm not trying to be rude to anyone, I'm trying to share information that isn't based on opinions written on self published blogs. Your opinion seems to based on an idea that someone who is transgender is trying to change biological sex, but every trans person I know understands that is not possible and are simply trying to change their body to match their identified gender. Hence the term transgender has the word gender in it. Saying there is not such thing as trans in response to someone talking about indoctrination indicates you don't want to critically question gender identity. Your blog post seems to conflate sex and gender. I haven't read the whole thing yet but I will later as I like to understand other perspectives, as in I like to critically question my own identity and opinions. It's literally one of the most interesting things to do. How many people that identify as trans have you had honest real life discussions with about their identity?
Do read my posts carefully. You seem to be reading into them what you want to read, not what I have written. Gender Identity is as real as Unicorn droppings. I no longer use the term 'gender', as with 70+ of them the term is meaningless. I only use the term Sex and those relating to tt. In responses to me please stop being a condescending prick. If I block you, what will I miss? The square root of fcuk all.
Maybe you should contact places like the Yale School of Medicine and let them know you've decided gender isn't real because you have a blog and a Twitter account.
All the TiM I have met in real life were of Ray Blanchard's internalised homophobic type: they were all in relationships with men. The TiM on X/Twitter are mostly autogynephiles. Before the GRA 2004 the terms sex and gender were interchangeable in law, but the GRA separated them to accommodate people pretending to be the other sex. Have you heard of the Lady Hale ruling? . Do some research, I'm not here to educate you.
Do you read the posts you write? Such sweeping generalisations, it's almost like you have some bitter internalised hatred of yourself so you want to go around telling people who they are. Do your own research is a classic line for people without anything to back their argument, here's another classic line for you. An argument made with no evidence can be dismissed with no evidence. What a funny bunch of comments, I guess with your open minded attitude you've had lots of honest comments with all the trans women that you've generalised in order to know them so well..... Your posts do make me smile but then I also feel sorry for you, what a sad existence to be filled with so much hate for people you don't know at all. I hope you can get over your obsession one day and be happy.
My first thought is correlation does not equal causation. Also, what if embracing a trans identity is the cause of brain differences rather than the result of them?
So as an actual transexual who transitioned 25 years ago and spent my life studying the subject, let me respond to this.
1. Christina does not disprove anything. She merely points out a lack of a control group and uses that as a way to force her theory. This is a popular criticism of anti-trans activists on all trans studies because control groups are next to impossible to do on trans issues. This is not the same as actually doing a study or doing real research. It's just pointing out a weakness in the diagnosis. It's not debunking anything.
2. This has been studied by multiple countries and multiple people. The structures of the brain exposed to hormone variations in utero have an effect on the masculinization and feminization of the human brain in ways that are irreversible. It's logically surmised that this has an effect on someone's sense of sexual identity. This is not a stretch.
3. People like to point out either brain size or shape as some kind of proof of how male and female brains are different when the part of our brains responsible for our identity is buried deeply and is very tiny. All the evidence is there.
4. While evidence for a biological component isn't so good enough to scan for GD, it is overwhelmingly good enough to say there is a very real biological component going on here.
Like Christina, you can wish for this to be a mental illness so you can reject trans people, but you can't say it's supported by science because an alt-right anti-trans activist wrote a blog about it on Substack. I challenge you to do some objective research. You'll come up with the same conclusions.
Very well put. Any intellectually honest reading of the body of neurobiological evidence (of which there is a lot) demonstrates clearly that gender and sexual identity are set during gestation and are immutable once set. Like any other biological process, in a small percent of cases, it can go wrong.
Hi, yes, you nailed it...also many twin studies are of children...most of whom would likely grow up to not have gender dysphoria (do they check???). And it's not clear how much of that is due to a increase likelihood of gd if you are gay.
Gender is how you see yourself. You and only you. Eliza Mondegreen wrote a great article on how teachers don't realize this and thus don't realize it can change...with their prompting (or due to other things). https://genspect.org/suggestion-appropriation-and-straight-out-theft/
Testosterone and estrogen do affect the brain, but again, if testosterone cheers up you up, it's an antidepressant (and makes people aggressive, I gather), it will do that, estrogen will lower certain things. Doesn't make you more male or female. It can make you male or female "looking", but so can makeup or all sorts of things. You remain as male or female as you were the day you were conceived, or that's my understanding.
(if you mind me posting the article, please let me know and I can remove, I just really like it.)
I’m not up on all of this brain science (so no science here, just opinion) but always believed that the brain changed with learning, like grew new pathways or something. The addition to hormones in amounts not made for one’s sex/biological body would also seem to be able to make changes in the brain. Not long ago someone was claiming that pedophiles had different brains and so his point was that they weren’t to blame for being attracted to children. My question with that one was, were they always pedophiles or if we’d looked at their brains years earlier would they have been normal? That’s one of my questions for all of this, with all that isn’t what we’d call normal heterosexuals. At some point did something happen that began a change? Could even indoctrination change a brain over time? I don’t know. I do think that some who are studying this have presupposed conclusions and that the science they do will seek these conclusions out and avoid other possibilities. In the end I don’t think it’s about people being different that’s the problem but rather messing with and diagnosing children, changing them in ways that cannot be undone in order to validate themselves. If kids were left alone this would hardly be an issue.
There are clearly actual trans kids, because every trans adult was at one time a trans kid. Instead of acting like we should do away with all trans medicine for under 18, an intellectually honest approach would be realizing there are two groups that need to be considered.
1. Actual trans kids that have severe and persistent gender dysphoria that is bad enough to cause suicidal ideation. These kids should be helped when properly diagnosed and given a conservative approach to interventions, close monitoring, and the exclusion of comorbid mental health conditions. We don't just disregard parental rights, the needs of the child, and the consensus of medical professionals because of a moral panic exaggerated by political posturing.
2. We need to make sure we can accurately prevent non-trans kids who seek gender treatment from getting it. This means following standards of care that require strict diagnostic criteria including a long history of severe dysphoria, and exclusion of comorbid mental health conditions. These are the standards of care we already have.
Instead of black/white thinking, the actual right solution is simply to punish doctors that skirt the standards of care and don't due proper due diligence when diagnosing. Make sure each of these kids gets an accurate diagnosis, and follows the recommendations of medical professionals and the scientific consensus.
Because nobody is doing that, it's a political scare tactic. Trans people don't want to see people who aren't trans transitioning anymore than you, if not more so given the likelihood of people like you using it against us. The idea that telling a child trans people exist and our identities are valid will somehow trans them is ridiculous, telling them we unquestionably don't exist only serves to indoctrinate them. Nobody is against watchful waiting for a reasonable period as determined by appropriately qualified medical practitioners. The issue is people online who are not qualified want to set a hard time frame for everyone, which any doctor will tell you is not how medical treatment should work. It should be on a case by case basis, as it has been for some time before conservative politicians decided to use it to score political points while seemingly ignoring other issues that impact far more children in even worse ways.
I agree with you that the entire debate boils down to whether people have an innate, unchangeable inner characteristic called “gender” that can be different from their physical sex. If you accept that premise, so many other aspects of gender ideology follow. It’s a very clever tactic that they treat this premise as an implicit fact, generally not stating it or allowing it to be scrutinized, but then building an entire belief system on it.
I have to ask them, do you also have internal versions of other physical characteristics, like height, or skin color? Is it possible that I was meant to be born in a tall body, even though I’m short? If I wear shoe lifts all the time and demand people call me tall and redefine the words tall and short to mean how I feel inside instead of my physical height, and demand big and tall stores carry my size, have I changed anything about the reality of my height? And will I be more or less dissatisfied with my height after doing all that than if I had come to terms with being a short person? And did I make the world worse by removing language that allows people to correctly size clothing, medication, and safety equipment?
How would one even define a male brain other than as a brain that is in a male body? If a brain in a male body has a certain characteristic then by definition it is a valid characteristic for a male brain to have.
Great comment. Due to my seemingly innate love of "Bossa nova" I've long joked with friends that it must have been some sort of a cosmic mistake that I was born blue collar in Detroit in 1952, when I should have been born middle class in Rio instead. Apparently there must be some sort of "Brazilian Bossa nova brain" that an unsuspecting person can be 'born with' : )
I remember a quip from the fishing editor of Sports Afield magazine from way back in my youth in the 1960's that somehow always stuck with me, and now seems highly pertinent. In response to a letter to the editor he made the comment that as a white male - "You could 'call me' an Ituri Forrest Pygmy - but that wouldn't make me one." I would update that quote for the current "gender-wars" to include that by the same token - "I could 'call myself' an Ituri Forrest Pygmy - but that wouldn't make me one either."
The Jewish Pioneers of Sexual Degeneracy in 1920s Berlin . . . by Michael Walsh . . .
IN 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, founded the “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” (Institute for ‘Sexual Research’) in Berlin. Both were active in the German Communist Party and were prominent members of Berlin’s Jewish community.
A multitude of degenerate services were offered at the institute, including the first surgical sex changes in modern history, abortions, lectures and ‘sex counseling’, room rentals, a large library of pornography and erotic literature on every possible perversion (including bestiality and pedophilia), and a Museum of Sex featuring a wide array of homosexual fetish items, dildos, “masturbation machines”, etc.
The institute hosted tens of thousands of visitors each year, including school class field trips. Hirschfeld was a notorious sodomite, popularly known in the Berlin gay scene by his cross-dresser name Tante Magnesia.
He also founded a committee for gay rights and wrote and published many degenerate books and journals, including Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types). In fact, he’s the sinister figure that coined the term ‘transvestite’. Hirschfeld campaigned to end the Berlin police department’s arrest of cross-dressers and prostitutes . . .
https://nationalvanguard.org/2019/06/the-jewish-pioneers-of-sexual-degeneracy-in-1920s-berlin/
Of course you have internal, brain based representations of your body. It would be impossible to move without them. Areas associated with embodiment and self perception are the same regions found to be gender discordant. There's a vast body of evidence for a biological etiology of trans that goes well beyond brain scan data including genetic and epigenetic research, familial and twin occurrence research, research into xx/xy chimeras, animal and primate studies where they have predictably manipulated gendered sexual behavior (lordosis vs. mounting) by giving non-natal hormones at critical developmental periods.
Like any other biological system, the brain and how the brain/body relate can be prone to error. Claiming this isnt possible, or cant happen is absolutely absurd and those who claim it show their ignorance of many separate avenues of research providing clear evidence for a biological etiology of a phenomenon that occurs for millions of people across the world and has existed in all of recorded history.
Certainly your brain is aware of your body - as it actually is. But believing you’re tall when you’re short, or have different color eyes than you actually do - that’s just wishful thinking. In any other way, if a person doesn’t like their body we preach self-acceptance. We recognize that obsessing over wanting to be thinner, or taller, or have straight hair, or no freckles, or have a different skin color, is not emotionally healthy, and we should be proud of and love ourselves as we are. But, if we are dissatisfied with our bodies in this one very specific way suddenly the path to mental health is not acceptance but medications and surgeries to change the body? I don’t believe that.
The only way you can say what a male brain looks like is to scan brains of people who are male. How else would you define a male brain?
And if being trans is biologically determined, what explains the 4000% increase in teen girls identifying as trans boys over the past decade? Are there hundreds of thousands of women of every previous generation who are actually “men” on the inside and don’t know it?
You can throw around red herrings like chimeras (an extraordinarily small percentage of the population and completely irrelevant as no one claims that trans people are chimeras) but you can’t make your argument make sense. I can’t be born the wrong sex any more than I can be born the wrong race. You are what you are, and believing you should be something other than what you actually are is a rejection of yourself, and is not emotionally healthy.
Your brain/body mapping is a gender dimorphic brain structure set during specific gestational windows. This structure is permanent. You are clearly uneducated on the neurobiology of gender, the multiple biological etiologies of gender identity/dysphoria all impacting the brain structures during this critical developmental window. You are also ignorant about the frequency of chimeras in the population which by some estimates is as high as 5-15% of the population. We simply don't diagnose it often because unless there are obvious phenotypically chimeric features, there's no reason to, and no way to determine which genetic samples might contain chimeric DNA. Go read more.
There's not structural component that maps the body to a specific race since different races don't have structurally different body maps, only gender does, obviously. There are many reasons for an increase in trans identification, mostly having to do with more accepting conditions, especially for trans men (genetic females). Big surprise more people come out when they wont be condemned, disowned, or made to feel like social pariahs. There are some instances of non-trans people claiming that identity without meeting the diagnostic criteria, but that doesn't somehow invalidate actual trans identities, it simply is cause for enforcing existing diagnostics and standards of care to exclude comorbid factors before signing off on medical interventions.
There's no solution to persistent, proven severe gender dysphoria besides transition, and claiming there are psychological ways to treat it is tantamount to promoting conversion therapy. You cannot change a permanently set brain structure with psychotherapy. I'm guessing you don't think sexual orientation is changeable, so why do you think gender identity is? These are both set gestationally with DNA, hormones, and other causal factors implicated setting up unchangeable brain structures that impact self body perception.
Just say you wont, and haven't read any of the body of evidence, instead of pretending to know what you are talking about.
There is no diagnostic test for transgender. They can’t do a brain scan or a blood test and say “yes, this person has a brain that would benefit from being in a different body.” Your brain is part and parcel of your body, containing all the same chromosomes that are in every other cell in your body. There’s a lot of variation in brains, though, and some traits might be more common in males or females, but so what? If I’m a female who likes football or a male who likes pink, does that make me actually the opposite sex? Of course not! It makes me a woman who likes football or a man who likes pink. Sex is defined by biology, not by whether you conform to arbitrary societal stereotypes. If you grew up on a deserted island and were never exposed to any gender-based expectations about how males and females should dress, look, or act, and you just did whatever your genuine preference were with no concept of whether other people thought it was appropriate for your sex, would you still feel like your body wasn’t right? I really doubt it.
If a trans person grew up on a deserted island, they would still have gender dysphoria. The feeling of misalignment comes from an actual misalignment in the areas of the brain responsible for mapping the body. They would feel their body was wrong just like any trans person growing up in normal circumstances. This is why even as a young child I felt gender dysphoria even before really understanding different sex bodies. My earliest memories (3-4) are about feeling my body was wrong, that I shouldn't have a penis, that I wasnt a boy inside.
Gender identity and dysphoria has to do with first and foremost the physically gendered body, not presentation, what colors you like, etc. It is a deep and permenant sense of discordance between what your mind expects your body tobe, and what your body actually is.
Why would it be possible for your brain to expect your body to be different in this one specific way, but not any other way? Height can also be variable based on environmental conditions both during gestation and during early life. So is it possible that due to hormonal or nutritional conditions you end up with a short brain in a tall body? Can your sense of how tall you are develop independently from your actual height? Would you keep bumping your head on things because your brain is “mapped” to a smaller body?
I think that at a very young age, we all unconsciously absorb messages from society about how males and females are “supposed” to be. Some of these are based on averages, some are based on cultural traditions, some are even contradictory. At some point a child (or adult) may say to themselves “That isn’t me”. The stricter and more toxic and more confusing the gender roles that you absorb, the more likely this will happen. If you are told the only valid way to be a man is to be John Wayne, many boys may feel that’s not who they are. So they conclude (still subconsciously) that they must be the opposite sex. It’s no accident that for many years, while women’s roles in society were expanding and changing while men were still held to rigid expectations about clothing, displays of emotion, and suitably masculine interests, almost all transgender people were born males. And now in the time of ubiquitous online porn and social media influencers where women are treated as display objects with no real personalities, the pendulum has swung the other direction and the born females outnumber the born males several times over, and most of them arrive at this conclusion not as young children but as they reach puberty and become subject to a million negative expectations and stereotypes around teenage girls.
When society tells you your internal characteristics don’t match what’s expected for someone with your external characteristics, you have three choices - try to change your personality to fit in, try to change your body so that their expectations will match your personality, or tell society to fuck off. By definition, if a person has a certain personality trait, it is a valid trait for someone with their physical characteristics to have.
Don’t get me wrong - you have the right to dress and present yourself however you want, and to pursue happiness in whatever way doesn’t infringe on others’ rights. I might think it’s a bad idea, but I also think facial tattoos are a bad idea and I still believe people have the right to get them. Clearly you have a lot invested in your beliefs and I don’t expect to change your mind. But I have never seen any convincing, unbiased science that convinces me that trans people’s brains are measurably different than anyone else of their sex prior to medicalization, outside of the normal variations that occur in brains.
Now do anorexia.
And your "solution" for it!
If a trans man had been born on a desert island populated with only girly feminine women, never saw a man, never saw a picture of a man, never heard anyone even talk about, even refer to, a man:
Would they have "a deep and permenant sense of discordance between what your mind expects your body tobe, and what your body actually is"?!
Can I be cat gender? How about autism gender? Can my gender change daily or weekly? I am sorry that you suffer from GD. It must be grueling. If you were on a deserted island you would not be thinking your body is wrong. You would only know that one body.
If all of these studies that you want people to educate ourselves on existed you would post them here.
It's very easy to say 'educate yourself' and never provide an iota of evidence to back up your crackpot theories. If you really wanted people to understand you'd be acknowledging the fetishism that underlies most of male 'transgender' behaviour.
Alfred Kinsey faked his data, the medical industry was in big tobacco’ pocket, there was Tuskegee, lobotomies, thalidomide... I really don’t give much of a damn what they have to say, without that historical qualification. For that matter, they’re not being open to the extent academics with axes to grind and activist taking over their institutions play a role in what they say and do. First feminist, then homosexuals, now this. Just a bit too convenient.
How many more DSM changes do we need to show that.
Not sure why you can't simply do a Google Scholar search yourself. Probably because you don't actually care to read the vast body of neuroanatomical, genomic, and hormonal science that has important things to say about this topic and points directly to biological etiology for trans people as well as homosexuality. Instead, it seems you would rather stick dogmatically to conclusions you arrived at through emotional means and insist others do this work for you while having no intention of engaging with the science in an intellectually honest way. Here's a starting point if I'm wrong and you actually want to learn more. There are dozens of others beyond this, the research in this field is extensive and spans more than 50 years.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2706155/#!po=54.8128
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2742630/#!po=10.6164
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1471-4159.2008.05384.x
http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~phurd/papers/Wallen_05.pdf#page19
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216874877_Dual-gender_macrochimeric_tissue_discordance_is_predicted_to_be_a_significant_cause_of_human_homosexuality_and_transgenderism
https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/262525
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25392497/
https://medium.com/s/story/your-default-brain-is-female-7481f8ae7827 (look at cited sources on this one)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-020-0666-3
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1038/s41598-019-53500-y.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804?via%3Dihub
A meta-study of (non) differences between male and female brains
https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/androgynous-brain-male-female-differences/
Quite an interesting article regarding some likely social-cultural influences on epigenetic development.
The researchgate article on macrochimeric tissue discordance is purely suggesting a hypothesis for potential research.
The Nature article says that prior to CHT, the program could identify TW as male at 87.5% vs 93.33% for CG males. Personally, I'd be more concerned at the loss of cortical thickness that CHT appears to cause. It also says that the differences in post-CHT males do not correlate with the brains of CG females (I may have missed it but it also doesn't seem to mention whether the TWs are same-sex attracted as they often tend to have brains similar to their female counterparts).
Well your first article is about changes caused by hormones.
Clearly you haven't even read the start of this article!
*incoming radio silence*
"...There's no solution to persistent, proven severe gender dysphoria besides transition..."
So it must also be true that:
"There's no solution to persistent, proven anorexia, or other body dysmorphia, besides transition by amputating a healthy limb, or liposuction and stomach stapling of starving bag of bones.."
Yes?!.
"...There's no solution to persistent, proven severe gender dysphoria besides transition..."
But earlier you said:
"...There's a vast body of evidence for a biological etiology of trans that goes well beyond brain scan data including genetic and epigenetic research, familial and twin occurrence research, research into xx/xy chimeras, animal and primate studies where they have predictably manipulated gendered sexual behavior (lordosis vs. mounting) by giving non-natal hormones at critical developmental periods."
"Like any other biological system, the brain and how the brain/body relate can be prone to error."
So why is the "solution" to, or "cure" for, the errors to poison a child with the WRONG hormones, AND to MUTILATE IT?
Why not use the RIGHT hormones for the "assigned" at birth body instead of mutilating it when you can't change its sex.
Or even its appearance adequately in most cases.
"Claiming this isnt possible, or cant happen is absolutely absurd and those who claim it show their ignorance of many separate avenues of research providing clear evidence..."
"....by some estimates is as high as 5-15% of the population. We simply don't diagnose it often.... there's no reason to, and no way to determine which genetic samples might contain chimeric DNA. Go read more."
So it could be as low as 0%?!
I have one question: what is “gender”? Seriously. You’ve used it many times here but I don’t know what it is in context. Do you mean sex? If you don’t mean sex can you define it?
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/what-do-we-mean-by-sex-and-gender/
Not buying it. Since trans ideology entered school’s curriculum, there are enormous upticks. Take it out of the schools and watch the trans fad away. Celebrate bring a butch lesbian or feminine boy and more trans identification goes away. Treat the underlying mental health issue and even more stop identifying as trans. Stop asking autistic kids for their gender and now we are back down to men with fetishes. .01 of population. It’s that simple
Wow, tell kids they can't be trans and they don't feel like expressing it. Great, so we indoctrinate kids then?
No such thing as 'Trans' kids, only the gay, autistic, abused or traumatised children of homophobic or Transhausen by Proxy parents. You should read the book by Hannah Barnes or the Cass Report, but note that Cass, who had a relative who transitioned in later life (and of course it did not influence her report !) believes in transitioning kids if their distress with their sex/sexual orientation/body warrants it.
"There's a vast body of evidence for a biological etiology of trans that goes well beyond brain scan data including genetic and epigenetic research, familial and twin occurrence research, research into xx/xy chimeras, animal and primate studies where they have predictably manipulated gendered sexual behavior (lordosis vs. mounting) by giving non-natal hormones at critical developmental periods."
So you're saying people aren't born in the wrong body.
Or as some of the founders of the cult say, with a differently gendered angel.
But that you were born in the right body.
But something went wrong with the non-natal hormones it was subjected to at critical developmental periods..
Is there a vast body of research in many separate avenues of research into correcting these errors instead of poisoning and mutilating kids?
Or are the cult leaders more interested in poisoning and mutilating kids than fixing the errors!
What is different between people who believe they were born in the wrong body and a 16kg 16 year old girl believing she is obese and needs urgent liposuction. It is a mental health issue. Unicorns are never lonely because there is always a 'Trans' child ready to jump on their back and chase the rainbow. Like Gender Identity there is no such think as Unicorn droppings, so 'Trans' kids can't step in them or have to sweep them up. What a wonderful fantasy life.
Delusions are features of psychotic or schizophrenic illnesses, as well as somatic map or brain structure imperfectiions or neurotransmitter chemistry defects. The hallmark is always an inability to perceive and operate within the bounds of reality, often with emotionally traumatic or even dangerous behaviors resulting from the disconnect.
Here are some example delusions to see a pattern.
You meet a man who delusionally believes he has one leg. It is a long a standing belief, which came about near puberty, he sincerely believes it, and it causes skelosdysphoria which impacts daily life. However, anyone can see that he was born with two legs and is merely delusional. The delusion is caused by an imperfect somatic mapping. It has no cure. It is a one-in-a-million cognitive defect. The treatment is to help him learn ways to not allow then delusion to dominate his thoughts. Without support the man may commit suicide, or as he is continually confronted with the fake leg attempt to remove it with fatal results. Affirming the delusion only strengthens the delusion and increases the drive to commit dangerous acts.
You meet a man who delusionally believes his genitals are not his. It is a long a standing belief, which came about near puberty, he sincerely believes it, and it causes genitodysphoria which impacts daily life. However, anyone can see that he was born with genitals which have not been replaced and is merely delusional. The delusion is caused by an imperfect somatic mapping. It has no cure. It is a one-in-a-million cognitive defect. The treatment is to help him learn ways to not allow then delusion to dominate his thoughts. Without support the man may commit suicide, or as he is continually confronted with the genitals attempt to remove them with fatal results. Affirming the delusion only strengthens the delusion and increases the drive to commit dangerous acts, or strike out against those who don’t believe the delusion.
You meet a man who delusionally believes he is a woman, he has menses, a womb, can bear children and lactate. It is a long a standing belief, which came about near puberty, he sincerely believes it, and it causes sexdysphoria which impacts daily life. However, anyone can see that he was born male and is merely delusional. The delusion is caused by an imperfect somatic mapping. It has no cure. It is a one-in-a-million cognitive defect. The treatment is to help him learn ways to not allow then delusion to dominate his thoughts. Without support the man may commit suicide, or as they are continually confronted with the fact that no internal organs are female may resort to self-mutilation with fatal results. Affirming the delusion only strengthens the delusion and increases the drive to commit dangerous acts, or strike out against those who don’t believe the delusion.
You meet a man who delusionally believes he has wings and can fly that he can levitate his body and move through the air flapping them. It is a long a standing belief, which came about near puberty, he sincerely believes it, and it causes aerodysphria which impacts daily life. However, anyone can see that he cannot fly and nis merely delusional. The delusion is caused by an imperfect somatic mapping. It has no cure. It is a one-in-a-million cognitive defect. The treatment is to help him learn ways to not allow then delusion to dominate his thoughts. Without support he may commit suicide or attempt to fly with fatal results. Affirming the delusion only strengthens the delusion and increases the drive to commit dangerous acts, or strike out against those who don’t believe the delusion.
You meet a man who delusionally believes he is an extremely attractive sexually alluring promiscuous woman. It is a long a standing belief, which came about near puberty, he sincerely believes it, and it causes pornosdysphoria which impacts daily life. However, anyone can see that he is a man. It has no cure. It is a one-in-a-million cognitive defect. The treatment is to help him learn ways to not allow then delusion to dominate his thoughts. Without support he may commit suicide or attempt to act out being a prostitue in risky situations with fatal effects. Affirming the delusion only strengthens the delusion and increases the drive to commit dangerous acts, or strike out against those who don’t believe the delusion.
These errors cannot be corrected, they are neuroanatomical structures set during gestation. They are "in the wrong body" insofar as their brain mapping isnt for their sex, but instead for the opposite sex (either completely or partially). So you either put value in the primacy of mind, or you see the body as the only truth. That's up to you.
Bingo. The mind can heal, if actually treated with respect. Instead of telling these kids ‘hey let us take this sawzaw to yo crotch or you gonna keel yoself’... maybe the ‘experts’, could tell them.. the truth. The mind and the body are meant to work together, and trying to over-throw the body just because someone likes the color pink, is evil.
Why the eagerness to ‘fix’ the body and not the mind? Because it is a religious agenda, at least for the ring leaders like Foucault or Money, or Kinsey etc.
The mind and the body are the same thing. It’s like space and time. They don’t exist separately, there is only spacetime. So we could call it bodymind but that seems a bit simplistic :)
But it’s true. While it may seem when we are highly conscious that we are a pilot (mind) operating a machine (body), it’s an illusion, and one that breaks constantly.
When we realise there is no body/mind dichotomy all of this goes away. Whatever a man does or wears is by definition something a man does or wears. Not something a woman “pilot” is making a male “machine” do by pulling levers in “her” brain.
Very good points...
We are not in control of our gender identity. As I said it is set during gestation and is immutable. To some extent we can control how much or how little we allow gender dysphoria to impact our lives, but it requires repression/compartmentalization. When I transitioned, it was an immense relief to not be trying to push those feelings down and ignore them (impossible). Learned helplessness is simply being a victim to a situation that is within your ability to control, and for trans people, what we can control is our bodies, not our minds. So we change our bodies to fit our brains, that's all transition is.
"We are not in control of our gender identity. As I said it is set during gestation and is immutable."
How does this explain desisters and detransitioners?
Indeed. And what about people who experienced dysphoriain their youth but found that the issue resolved of its own accord later in life? That suggests a great degree of mutability.
Detransitioners detransition for many reasons, some were never trans in the first place, never suffered from gender dysphoria, and thus transition actually created gender dysphoria instead of solving it. Many others detransition because they have been disowned by their family and there is familial/social pressure to detransition. Still others detransition because they are not happy with the extent to which they were able to change their body, perhaps they do not pass, and feel they would rather live with dysphoria than exist in this world as visibly trans and face the hate that comes along with that.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918369.2021.1919479
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.632784/full (for the desisters)
Now looking at these two pieces, all of them exhibited gender dysphoria, although had not isolated the specific cause of that distress. If they were convinced at the time that they were the opposite gender, but later realised they weren't, then doesn't that indicate that gender identity is not immutable? How would you determine who is truly trans if such a high percentage desist? If any kind of psychological investigation is disallowed, how would you determine who should have gender-affirming care and who shouldn't?
You determine it by how long they have had dysphoria, its extent, and by excluding comorbid mental health conditions and external influences. There are clear standards of care for doing this that, if followed, are able to easily tell the difference between someone with actual gender dysphoria, and someone who simply claims it.
So you accept that "some were never trans in the first place, never suffered from gender dysphoria, and thus transition" poisoning and mutilation was (even more) criminal malpractice.
And you also accept that you can "actually create[.] gender dysphoria".
And that transitioning can create problems "instead of solving it".
And that "Many others [..]transition because they have been" pressured by "progressive" teachers, Trans-Activists, mothers with Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy and related mental illnesses, and can't desist or de-transition for fear of being "disowned by their" "community" "/social pressure to [..]transition".
And you also accept that "others detransition because they are not happy with the extent to which they were able to change their body, perhaps they do not pass, and feel they would rather live with dysphoria than exist in this world as visibly trans and face the [self-]hate that comes along with that"!
And they can’t have sex, are in pain, have health problems. Don’t want to be a patient for life. Wish they had been allowed to grow into themselves.
Transgender identification creates practical problems for the accommodation of women and transwomen, and I'm curious how you think we should handle that.
The whole point of gender-segregated changing rooms, locker rooms, toilets, prisons, rape crisis centers, etc... is to protect women and girls from predatory men. And the whole point of having separate men's and women's sports is to give women the opportunity to compete. There's no prohibition on women in the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, etc... there just aren't any women capable of competing at that level, and so separate leagues were created so that women could have a chance to compete in sports.
The problem is that anybody can say they're transgender.
If I wanted to legally become a woman, all I would need to do is fill out a couple of short forms:
https://doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Documents/Pubs/422-143-SexDesignationChangeAdult.pdf
https://dol.wa.gov/forms/view/520043/download?inline
And then provide a copy of my new identification to the Social Security Administration:
https://www.ssa.gov/personal-record/change-sex-identification
If I had the inclination to do so, I could fill out the forms and send them in, in less than 20 minutes. Legally changing my sex would be easier than doing my taxes. Then I would legally be a woman, and I would be legally entitled to go to the gym or a public swimming pool and shower in the women's locker room if I felt like it.
I think you have to admit that that's pretty messed up. Suppose I were a creep who just got off on making women feel uncomfortable? I'd be legally protected.
If you engage in the brain argument you've already lost. You accepted that there could be a connection between being a male/female and the brain structure. You need to stay on point and remind them that sex is not about the brain but about the roles in reproduction. You are either of the nature to get pregnant or to impregnate. That's it. We might observe differences in brains, height, weight, muscles, hormones, etc. but they are irrelevant when it comes to this classification.
With all due respect, *everything* is about the brain… including sex. I understand your point — and I agree with what you're trying to say — but I think it would be better articulated without dismissing the role of the brain in creating and controlling the behaviors in which we engage. Please take my comment in the kind and collegial manner in which it was intended... Sincerely, Frederick
The mind wants to find fault. Beware
Your point is a good one but not in response to this particular bit of insanity.
Reminding them which sex the rest of their body is does not refute their idea of having an "opposite-sex brain".
And gender...?
Very well done description. I will add another angle on the issue. While sex has a binary distribution, males produce small gametes (sperm) and females produce large gametes (eggs), most secondary sex characteristics do not have a binary distribution. For example, men tend to have greater height than women, 176cm for men vs 163 cm for women, as estimated by WHO. We know that some men stand about 163 cm tall, but we don't conclude they have the body of a woman. Similarly, some women stand about 176cm tall, but we don't conclude they have the body of a man. Evolution produces this natural variation, always searching for an adaptive advantage.
Brain structure also has a non-binary distribution but with differences between men and women structures on average. A woman having a brain structure closer to the average for men does not imply she is a man anymore than having a height closer to the average for men does not imply she is a man. It's interesting to know that gay men have a brain structure closer to that of a woman and it may well be correlated with sexual attraction but it doesn't imply anything about the person's sex.
Just a side note: a model of binary dristibution for brain structure presents a problem for those claiming a non-binary identity.
I liken having a non-binary identity to not having an age. I joke that Indiana Jones assured me that non-binary skeletons are instantly recognizable by the complete absence of bones.
Having a non-binary identity simply means that your brain/body mapping was only partially masculinized (for genetic males) or partially masculinized when it shouldnt have been at all (for genetic females), resulting in a gender identity that doesnt neatly fit the binary. Like everything in nature we see a spectrum, a bimodal distribution, with a small percentage of people falling in the middle. It isn't a third gender, it is the middle of both genders.
Where do you get this from?
This is garbage. “Non-binary” is a ridiculous fad that, like Goth, is already fading away as the fad passes. It’s a way for mostly chubby unattractive adolescents to pretend they’re interesting. It’s explicitly child/adolescent focussed and is a rejection of adulthood. Adulthood comes eventually anyway, even if you wear dungarees like a toddler and dye your hair blue like a cartoon character. In schools now kids roll their eyes and say “oh look, they is crying again, them is so dramatic”
A woman having brain regions responsible for mapping the body (somatosensory cortex, putamen and others) that was masculinized when it shouldnt have been, will feel gender dysphoria, because that part of the brain is responsible for mapping a gendered body to a gendered brain. Misalignment causes gender dysphoria and is the biological basis for transgender identity.
References? Thanks in advance.
I provided some further up in the thread, but there are dozens more out there that have looked at brain sex and the process of how brain/body mapping and sexual orientation happens during gestation and how hormones and other factors influence that development.
The biology teacher at my former high school pushed the “brain sex” theory on her students. Thanks for this rebuttal. Looking forward to your group project.
I can't honestly believe that? How utterly absurd & disingenuous. You are years behind the curve. There are 10's of thousands of kids now claiming to be in the wrong body, 70% of them girls. This indoctrination begins in kindergarten. You need to take a hard look at the current curriculum in all schools in the West.
https://youtu.be/DWbxIFC0Q2o
https://youtu.be/iS45Ykm61Wo
https://youtu.be/tLXdoqXbC6k
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/transgender-surgery-common-sense?isFreemail=true
I could go on & on. Get on YouTube or any other social media & listen to the detransitioners. Look at the lawsuits filed, particularly in the UK & Sweden where this "practice" has now been banned. You speak of "rarity" & are clearly unaware of how many thousands of kids are "transitioning" due to social media, school incitement & egregious mental illness that now proliferates in society. And "neurobiological reality"? Sorry, but that is myth. If you take a hard look you'll see that the LGB community has been co-opted by this train wreck; they do not endorse or support it as can be seen by all the lesbian & gay groups speaking out against grooming. Being same sex attracted is one thing, believing you are born in the wrong body & being nurtured in this madness leads to frankensurgury & permanent sterility & the myth of suicide is what's promoted by this industry, not the kids.
Great piece, thank you!
Another factor is the observed phenomenon that old trans people with dementia/Alzheimers are forgetting they're trans and reverting to their original identity:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363460719876835
Did you miss the part about it being anecdotal evidence? Oh and the rest of the article?
Weird! You rely heavily on anecdotal evidence All. The. Time. When you think it's in your favor, that is!
But I'm not descending to your level of scientific integrity.
You clearly didn't read the 5 corresponding cited articles. You probably didn't even read beyond the Abstract.
Each study group by itself was too small for statistical analysis, but all taken together, the evidence is convincing enough to warrant mention in this paper.
As the paper mentions, there aren't enough trans elderly with dementia yet to practicably make one big enough study group for one statically-significant study (without spending a LOT of money on travel for the key in-person interviews), but there soon will be.
Me? When did I cite an article stating anecdotal evidence? I occasionally state my own experience as a trans person, is that what you mean? Statistical analysis, do you mean statistical significance?
If a brain is in a male body, it's a male brain. It may vary from other male brains, but it is still male.
What's missing from the discussion here is the real engine behind this wave of "trans" kids; this international financial push to disrupt society by disrupting sanity vis a vis "gender ideology". These children are the victims of social contagion & nothing more. From Kindergarten up, kids are indoctrinated to believe they can choose one of many genders, which of course, always funnels down to the opposite gender via surgery & hormones. These children are completely impressionable and, as the pack animals we are, want to fit in & will "identify" with whatever promoted ideology is pushed incl. the insane "critical race" garbage. This is a planned & well financed global initiative to destroy society & sterilize a whole generation of children.
It sure seems like it
I’m a freezing with the free market profit of this.
You can't honestly believe this can you? The vast vast majority of LGBT kids are dissuaded, sometimes to the point of being disowned or physically abused from their identity. They are still LGBT despite the external world doing everything it can to disabuse them of the feeling.
Pretending there is some international conspiracy to change kids genders for money is a bizarre conclusion to come to given the rarity of the condition, and the fact that most of the treatments are cheap generic drugs, not exactly a wildly profitable scheme, and one that would require massive coordinated effort and social manipulation on a worldwide scale.
Could you have been convinced to change genders at any point in your youth? Could you have been turned gay? It seems it is you who has been indoctrinated by a moral panic social contagion that completely misrepresents the reality of the situation and the fundamental neurobiological etiology of LGBT identities.
The simplest explanation is the right one. Trans people exist not because of indoctrination, but because there's a huge variety of ways of being, and it makes sense (and is supported by a large body of scientific evidence) that a small percent of the population has a condition whereby their brain/body mapping had an error, and they have a deep sense of misalignment in what their brain expects their body to be, and what it actually is.
Kristin. How can you not be suspicious of big pharma and the medical industrial complex making patients for life. The sharp uptick in my boy a few years. There have always been a small percentage of trans but between social justice warriors gone to far and sad lock down kids on social media it has exploded. The vast medicalization of young people in the US must stop. Take a breath. Let them play with the body they came with. To be alive is to feel discomfort, pain. Nothing fixes that. Adulting is learning how to carry it and find the joy when you can. Medicalizing is for grown ups to decide for themselves. Not youths and teens
If you are suspicious of the size of the issue being created by the medical industrial complex are you equally suspicious of the political focus on this issue when a far greater number of children are impacted by things like poverty and domestic violence. In the UK maybe a few thousand kids are being referred for gender affirming treatment while close to a million suffer from domestic violence and even more suffer from inequality and poverty, yet the political capital invested in one issue far outweighs the others disproportionately. The focus on individual detransitioners is also highly disingenuous, I've yet to see anyone on the GC side of the debate hold up videos of the detransitioners who detransition purely due to the harassment and abuse from other parts of society the received when trying to transition.
As usual, this is a very interesting and thought-provoking essay. However, as I've commented before, some of it is based on inaccurate ideas about biology and psychology. While I agree with all of your basic points, your arguments would be more convincing if they included some of the subtleties of neurobiology and psychology. For instance, debating about whether or not gender identity or gender dysphoria this "biologically based" makes no sense because it can be nothing else but biologically based (as are all thought processes). This is a misunderstanding of the term "biologically based" entertained by both sides of this debate. Likewise, citing the claim that "there is no biological test for gender identity" makes no sense in the light of the fact that there is no single biological test for Alzheimer's or autism. This, too, is a point misunderstood by people on both sides of this debate.
See, for instance:
There is "Biological Evidence for Gender Identity..." but it’s not what you think
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/there-is-biological-evidence-for
Hallucinating Your Inner Trans-Reptile
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/hallucinating-your-inner-trans-reptile
Please understand that I'm not saying that any of your argumentation is fundamentally wrong or misguided. I'm just suggesting that your arguments could be made more convincingly.
Thank you again for another wonderful essay. I appreciate your intellectual vigor and commitment to your beliefs. Sincerely, Frederick
You might have some interest in my conversation with Martin Greenwald, M.D. -- Socratic Psychiatrist -- on the topic of gender identity over on RLS:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/the-sex-binary-is-not-high-school/comment/14288738
I'll take a look, my friend!
The worst part of this is that I 100% believe that this "fact" was taught to this person in school. That's why the Left's cries of "Free Speech!" when it comes to curriculum and library content are so disingenuous.
GI can be likened to the concept of the human soul. The soul remains a constant through life. It is not like the GI metronome: Alice starts off female, claims to be male, then after puberty is female again (as you point out).
I was raised a Catholic, attended a Catholic school, and became an atheist in my mid-20s. My Catholicism was very real and important to me, but I recognized that it was indoctrination, well intended, but false. GI Ideology follows the same false indoctrination model.
How does questioning your identity and sense of self equal indoctrination? As another former Catholic and trans person, the idea is laughable, it's literally the opposite of indoctrination. It's about critically analysing your own identity to better understand it. People telling kids "you have a penis, so are therefore a boy and can't wear a dress" are the ones doing the indoctrination. No trans person wants anyone to transition if it's not necessary and appropriate for them. Detransitioners break our hearts too, maybe even more than yours.
Cut the breaking hearts patronage. There is no such thing as 'trans', only people who do not identify as their birth sex and that is a mental health issue, like a 16kg 16 year old girl believing she is obese and needs urgent liposuction. Stonewall's TWAW was attempted indoctrination. Look up the term in the dictionary. Another rude remark from you gets a block.
1. Have a look at my X/Twitter account @sexnotgi and our initiative @ISBI3. Don't waste my time.
2. And this Substack post https://open.substack.com/pub/mneill/p/duped-by-trans-women-are-women-stonewall?r=zfazk&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I've read your blog, if you think you are not indoctrinated into a way of thinking I don't think you've looked up that word in a dictionary. Also maybe try to look up the differences between sex and gender, they are different, whether you as a qualified blog owner wants to admit or not. Try somewhere like Yale School of medicines definitions. If you think trans people are analogous with anorexia then you are the one wasting my time. You are either being disingenuous or are just ignorant, either way you need to try and get out of your echo chamber.
Reading means interpreting the words, not just looking at them. A 16kg 16 year old girl believing she is obese and needs urgent liposuction is delusional, like a 'trans' person believing they are the other sex and need surgery and hormones to make them like the other sex.
So being trans is just like having anorexia now? What research have you done to come to that opinion and which journal is it published in so I can read it.
Riki, you have zero posts and no followers. Which country do you reside in, so I can make references to the applicable laws?
What laws would you need to reference? I'm new here, I found it because I like to challenge myself and read a wide variety of different opinions. Its also a great way to remind myself of how poorly informed some people are, like the ones who "don't believe in gender".
Is the term Woman about sex or gender? I'm not trying to be rude to anyone, I'm trying to share information that isn't based on opinions written on self published blogs. Your opinion seems to based on an idea that someone who is transgender is trying to change biological sex, but every trans person I know understands that is not possible and are simply trying to change their body to match their identified gender. Hence the term transgender has the word gender in it. Saying there is not such thing as trans in response to someone talking about indoctrination indicates you don't want to critically question gender identity. Your blog post seems to conflate sex and gender. I haven't read the whole thing yet but I will later as I like to understand other perspectives, as in I like to critically question my own identity and opinions. It's literally one of the most interesting things to do. How many people that identify as trans have you had honest real life discussions with about their identity?
Do read my posts carefully. You seem to be reading into them what you want to read, not what I have written. Gender Identity is as real as Unicorn droppings. I no longer use the term 'gender', as with 70+ of them the term is meaningless. I only use the term Sex and those relating to tt. In responses to me please stop being a condescending prick. If I block you, what will I miss? The square root of fcuk all.
Maybe you should contact places like the Yale School of Medicine and let them know you've decided gender isn't real because you have a blog and a Twitter account.
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/what-do-we-mean-by-sex-and-gender/
All the TiM I have met in real life were of Ray Blanchard's internalised homophobic type: they were all in relationships with men. The TiM on X/Twitter are mostly autogynephiles. Before the GRA 2004 the terms sex and gender were interchangeable in law, but the GRA separated them to accommodate people pretending to be the other sex. Have you heard of the Lady Hale ruling? . Do some research, I'm not here to educate you.
Do you read the posts you write? Such sweeping generalisations, it's almost like you have some bitter internalised hatred of yourself so you want to go around telling people who they are. Do your own research is a classic line for people without anything to back their argument, here's another classic line for you. An argument made with no evidence can be dismissed with no evidence. What a funny bunch of comments, I guess with your open minded attitude you've had lots of honest comments with all the trans women that you've generalised in order to know them so well..... Your posts do make me smile but then I also feel sorry for you, what a sad existence to be filled with so much hate for people you don't know at all. I hope you can get over your obsession one day and be happy.
My first thought is correlation does not equal causation. Also, what if embracing a trans identity is the cause of brain differences rather than the result of them?
So as an actual transexual who transitioned 25 years ago and spent my life studying the subject, let me respond to this.
1. Christina does not disprove anything. She merely points out a lack of a control group and uses that as a way to force her theory. This is a popular criticism of anti-trans activists on all trans studies because control groups are next to impossible to do on trans issues. This is not the same as actually doing a study or doing real research. It's just pointing out a weakness in the diagnosis. It's not debunking anything.
2. This has been studied by multiple countries and multiple people. The structures of the brain exposed to hormone variations in utero have an effect on the masculinization and feminization of the human brain in ways that are irreversible. It's logically surmised that this has an effect on someone's sense of sexual identity. This is not a stretch.
3. People like to point out either brain size or shape as some kind of proof of how male and female brains are different when the part of our brains responsible for our identity is buried deeply and is very tiny. All the evidence is there.
4. While evidence for a biological component isn't so good enough to scan for GD, it is overwhelmingly good enough to say there is a very real biological component going on here.
Like Christina, you can wish for this to be a mental illness so you can reject trans people, but you can't say it's supported by science because an alt-right anti-trans activist wrote a blog about it on Substack. I challenge you to do some objective research. You'll come up with the same conclusions.
Very well put. Any intellectually honest reading of the body of neurobiological evidence (of which there is a lot) demonstrates clearly that gender and sexual identity are set during gestation and are immutable once set. Like any other biological process, in a small percent of cases, it can go wrong.
So important to push back against WPATH seeking to “depsychopathologize gender incongruence.” It is the root of a lot of the most dangerous nonsense.
Hi, yes, you nailed it...also many twin studies are of children...most of whom would likely grow up to not have gender dysphoria (do they check???). And it's not clear how much of that is due to a increase likelihood of gd if you are gay.
Gender is how you see yourself. You and only you. Eliza Mondegreen wrote a great article on how teachers don't realize this and thus don't realize it can change...with their prompting (or due to other things). https://genspect.org/suggestion-appropriation-and-straight-out-theft/
Testosterone and estrogen do affect the brain, but again, if testosterone cheers up you up, it's an antidepressant (and makes people aggressive, I gather), it will do that, estrogen will lower certain things. Doesn't make you more male or female. It can make you male or female "looking", but so can makeup or all sorts of things. You remain as male or female as you were the day you were conceived, or that's my understanding.
(if you mind me posting the article, please let me know and I can remove, I just really like it.)
Thank you for delving into this!
I’m not up on all of this brain science (so no science here, just opinion) but always believed that the brain changed with learning, like grew new pathways or something. The addition to hormones in amounts not made for one’s sex/biological body would also seem to be able to make changes in the brain. Not long ago someone was claiming that pedophiles had different brains and so his point was that they weren’t to blame for being attracted to children. My question with that one was, were they always pedophiles or if we’d looked at their brains years earlier would they have been normal? That’s one of my questions for all of this, with all that isn’t what we’d call normal heterosexuals. At some point did something happen that began a change? Could even indoctrination change a brain over time? I don’t know. I do think that some who are studying this have presupposed conclusions and that the science they do will seek these conclusions out and avoid other possibilities. In the end I don’t think it’s about people being different that’s the problem but rather messing with and diagnosing children, changing them in ways that cannot be undone in order to validate themselves. If kids were left alone this would hardly be an issue.
There are clearly actual trans kids, because every trans adult was at one time a trans kid. Instead of acting like we should do away with all trans medicine for under 18, an intellectually honest approach would be realizing there are two groups that need to be considered.
1. Actual trans kids that have severe and persistent gender dysphoria that is bad enough to cause suicidal ideation. These kids should be helped when properly diagnosed and given a conservative approach to interventions, close monitoring, and the exclusion of comorbid mental health conditions. We don't just disregard parental rights, the needs of the child, and the consensus of medical professionals because of a moral panic exaggerated by political posturing.
2. We need to make sure we can accurately prevent non-trans kids who seek gender treatment from getting it. This means following standards of care that require strict diagnostic criteria including a long history of severe dysphoria, and exclusion of comorbid mental health conditions. These are the standards of care we already have.
Instead of black/white thinking, the actual right solution is simply to punish doctors that skirt the standards of care and don't due proper due diligence when diagnosing. Make sure each of these kids gets an accurate diagnosis, and follows the recommendations of medical professionals and the scientific consensus.
But it's not the "Deniers" who insist , demand, that kids are pushed down the toxic chemicals and bodily mutilation pathway as quickly as possible.
And that any sceptics are silenced, cancelled, fired, attacked if they dare even discuss watchful waiting.
It's the Trans "community"!
Can you provide some links to where you attack THEM for THAT?!
So I can educate myself!!!
Because nobody is doing that, it's a political scare tactic. Trans people don't want to see people who aren't trans transitioning anymore than you, if not more so given the likelihood of people like you using it against us. The idea that telling a child trans people exist and our identities are valid will somehow trans them is ridiculous, telling them we unquestionably don't exist only serves to indoctrinate them. Nobody is against watchful waiting for a reasonable period as determined by appropriately qualified medical practitioners. The issue is people online who are not qualified want to set a hard time frame for everyone, which any doctor will tell you is not how medical treatment should work. It should be on a case by case basis, as it has been for some time before conservative politicians decided to use it to score political points while seemingly ignoring other issues that impact far more children in even worse ways.