Gender swap situation

Oh dear, thread derailed op @TenThousandYears!

It used to be an implication that you were a man, or a trans woman. Not sure if it still is

Haha, that took you all of -what - 10 minutes did it? To acquire, personally read, and absorb complex information, from over a dozen scientific papers?

They are a highly diverse range of papers , which contribute to different parts of the conversation/ puzzle, on the following:

1. biomedical evidence on genetic, hormonal and structural brain differences in trans people, people with gender dysphoria; as well as the influence of sex hormones (both endogenous and exogenous on structural brain factors). Several of these make a specific case for a biological basis for transness, underwritten by sex-hormone signalling genes, others provide broader information of relevance (e.g. how sex hormones influence structural brain factors/ MRI imaging of brains in people with gender dysphoria etc).

2. biomedical evidence on sex development, it's vast complexity and variations - which is very much part of the conversation.

3. psychological literature on gender cognition development amongst both gender typical and gender variant children.

4. historical, sociological, anthropological and cultural literatures about trans people at various points in history and across various cultures.

These are just a snap short of the huge diversity of resources out there of relevance to explaining transness and evidencing it's universality as a form of human diversity.

Please go forth and further educate yourself.

Oh have you really? Can you post here a link to your peer-reviewed published research so we can read it?

@Tandora Oh dear! I’ve read quite a lot of these, and:

(a) none of the scientific papers say anything like you’ve suggested. Some are about sex development and have nothing at all to do with “trans”. Some are highly suggestive and do things like analyse the chromosomal data from a few transgender people and “possibly identify some genes for further research”, but have no conclusions at all, or certainly none that say anything like you’re suggesting — much less a proper large scale study with any kind of hard conclusion about clearly identified “polygenic” causes.

This all rather weakens your case a lot more if those are the only things you can come up with from the science side. And they are all from very low-ranked journals.

2 - on the social science side. Did you get an AI to put these together? It’s clear that you’ve not actually read most of these yourself, as many of them actually disprove your claims. Others are highly tendentious. And the ones which have got anything meaningful to say about “trans” history are in exactly the time period in which it’s an emergent concept!

Some of us on here are actual academics in the field who read this kind of material for a living and have done for twenty years, and a few minutes with ChatGPT isn’t going to find a magic bullet that we haven’t seen before 😆

Some hijra people are absolutely trans, but the hijra community is diverse. I've actually personally conducted research with hijra people in India. How about you? Or have you just read second hand stuff and incorporated/ interpreted the information you absorbed through the lens of gender critical dogma?

Mumsnet users so often seem to think that I am there as a personal reference library for them. There are any number of search engines that people can use to generate their own references.

Some historical, anthropological/ cultural, psychological and biomedical resources for you. Just a tiny tiny TINY snapshot. I could do this all day. But I won't.

People, please do your own research. It takes a really long time to compile and organise just a few of them. There is an absolute tonne of information out there from all corners of the world and across multiple disciplines.

Biomedical and psychological research

Flint, C., Förster, K., Koser, S. A., Konrad, C., Zwitserlood, P., Berger, K., Hermesdorf, M., Kircher, T., Nenadic, I., Krug, A., Baune, B. T., Dohm, K., Redlich, R., Opel, N., Arolt, V., Hahn, T., Jiang, X., Dannlowski, U., & Grotegerd, D. (2020). Biological sex classification with structural MRI data shows increased misclassification in transgender women. Neuropsychopharmacology, 45(10), 1758–1765.

Foreman, M., Hare, L., York, K., Balakrishnan, K., Sánchez, F. J., Harte, F., Erasmus, J., Vilain, E., & Harley, V. R. (2019). Genetic Link Between Gender Dysphoria and Sex Hormone Signaling. J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 104(2), 390–396.

Juli, G., Juli, M. R., Juli, R., & Juli, L. (2023). Gender Dysphoria and DNA. Psychiatria Danubina, 35, 179–181.

Kiyar, M., Collet, S., T’Sjoen, G., & Mueller, S. C. (2020). Neuroscience in transgender people: An update. Neuroforum, 26(2),
85–92.

Kreukels, B. P. C., & Guillamon, A. (2016). Neuroimaging studies in people with gender incongruence. Int Rev Psychiatry, 28(1), 120–128.

Hare, L., Bernard, P., Sánchez, F. J., Baird, P. N., Vilain, E., Kennedy, T., & Harley, V. R. (2009). Androgen Receptor Repeat Length Polymorphism Associated with Male-to-Female Transsexualism. Biol Psychiatry, 65(1), 93–96.

McEwen, B. S., & Milner, T. A. (2017). Understanding the broad influence of sex hormones and sex differences in the brain. J Neurosci Res, 95(1–2), 24–39.

Mueller, S. C., Guillamon, A., Zubiaurre-Elorza, L., Junque, C., Gomez-Gil, E., Uribe, C., Khorashad, B. S., Khazai, B., Talaei, A., Habel, U., Votinov, M., Derntl, B., Lanzenberger, R., Seiger, R., Kranz, G. S., Kreukels, B. P. C., Kettenis, P. T. C., Burke, S. M., Lambalk, N. B., … Luders, E. (2021). The Neuroanatomy of Transgender Identity: Mega-Analytic Findings From the ENIGMA Transgender Persons Working Group. The Journal of Sexual Medicine. Volume 18:Issue 6 (2021).

Olson, K. R., Key, A. C., & Eaton, N. R. (2015). Gender cognition in transgender children. Psychological Science, 26(4),
467–474.

Kilpatrick, L. A., Holmberg, M., Manzouri, A., & Savic, I. (2019). Cross sex hormone treatment is linked with a reversal of cerebral patterns associated with gender dysphoria to the baseline of cisgender controls. Eur J Neurosci, 50(8), 3269–3281.

Kouri, C., Sommer, G., Martinez de Lapiscina, I., Elzenaty, R. N., Tack, L. J. W., Cools, M., Ahmed, S. F., Flück, C. E., Abali, S., Abali, Z. Y., Akin, L., Almaraz, M., Audí, L., Aydin, M., Balsamo, A., Baronio, F., Bryce, J., Busiah, K., Caimari, M., … Zelinska, N. (2024). Clinical and genetic characteristics of a large international cohort of individuals with rare NR5A1/SF-1 variants of sex development. EBioMedicine, 99, 104941.

Polderman, T. J. C., Kreukels, B. P. C., Irwig, M. S., Beach, L., Chan, Y. M., Derks, E. M., Esteva, I., Ehrenfeld, J., Heijer, M. Den, Posthuma, D., Raynor, L., Tishelman, A., & Davis, L. K. (2018a). The Biological Contributions to Gender Identity and Gender Diversity: Bringing Data to the Table. Behavior Genetics, 48(2), 95–108.

Roselli, C. E. (2018). Neurobiology of gender identity and sexual orientation. J Neuroendocrinol, 30(7), e12562-n/a.

Uribe, C., Escrichs, A., Filippi, E., Sanz‐Perl, Y., Junque, C., Gomez‐Gil, E., Kringelbach, M. L., Guillamon, A., & Deco, G. (2022). Whole‐brain dynamics differentiate among cisgender and transgender individuals. Hum Brain Mapp, 43(13), 4103–4115.

Warrier, V., Greenberg, D. M., Weir, E., Buckingham, C., Smith, P., Lai, M.-C., Allison, C., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2020). Elevated rates of autism, other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses, and autistic traits in transgender and gender-diverse individuals. Nature Communications, 11(1), 3959.

Furtado, P. S., Moraes, F., Lago, R., Barros, L. O., Toralles, M. B., & Barroso, U. (2012). Gender dysphoria associated with disorders of sex development. Nat Rev Urol, 9(11), 620–627.

Kumar, C., & Roy, J. K. (2024). Decoding the epigenetic mechanism of mammalian sex determination. Experimental Cell Research, 439(1),
114011.

Gülgöz, S., Glazier, J. J., Enright, E. A., Alonso, D. J., Durwood, L. J., Fast, A. A., Lowe, R., Ji, C., Heer, J., Martin, C. L., & Olson, K. R. (2019). Similarity in transgender and cisgender children’s gender development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(49), 24480–24485.

Hamouie, A., Dwiggins, M., & Gomez-Lobo, V. (2019). 35. Case Series of Hormone Abnormalities in Term and Preterm Infants With Ambiguous Genitalia not Diagnosed With a Disorder of Sexual Differentiation. Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, 32(2), 208.

Piferrer, F. (2013). Epigenetics of sex determination and gonadogenesis. Developmental Dynamics, 242(4), 360–370.

Fausto-Sterling, A. (2021). A Dynamic Systems Framework for Gender/Sex Development: From Sensory Input in Infancy to Subjective Certainty in Toddlerhood. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 15, 613789.

Historical and cross-cultural research

Martin, J. I. (2025). Sexual and Gender Minority History: A Counter-Narrative (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.

Ramet, S. P. (1996). Gender reversals and gender cultures: anthropological and historical perspectives.

Skidmore, E. (2017). True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (1st ed.). NYU Press.

LaFleur, G., Raskolnikov, M., & Klosowska, A. (2021). Trans Historical: Gender Plurality before the Modern. In Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2021 (1st ed.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Erlick, E. (2025). Before gender: Lost stories from trans history, 1850-1950.

Frantz, Linden, Vargas, Frantz, David Evans, Linden, Christina, Vargas, Chris, & Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art, issuing body. (2024). Trans hirstory in 99 objects (2nd edition.).

Shuster, S. M. (2021). Trans medicine : the emergence and practice of treating gender.

Capello, E. (2022). Trans and White Trash: An Ethnography of Trans People in the Deep South. Anthropology and Humanism, 47(1), 69–84.

Nunn, Z. (2023). Trans Liminality and the Nazi State. Past & Present, 260(1), 123–157.

Erlick, E. (2025). Before gender : lost stories from trans history, 1850-1950.

Lowik, A. J. (2018). Reproducing Eugenics, Reproducing while Trans: The State Sterilization of Trans People. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 14(5), 425–445.

Arnal, K., & Stryker, S. (2015). Bordered Lives: Transgender Portraits from Mexico (1st ed.). The New Press.

Boyce, P., Brown, S., Cavill, S., Chaukekar, S., Chisenga, B., Dash, M., Dasgupta, R. K., De La Brosse, N., Dhall, P., Fisher, J., Gutierrez-Patterson, M., Hemabati, O., Hueso, A., Khan, S., Khurai, S., Patkar, A., Nath, P., Snel, M., & Thapa, K. (2018). Transgender-inclusive sanitation: insights from South Asia. Waterlines, 37(2), 102–117.

Sommer, M. H. (2024). The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China. Columbia
University Press.

Where is this body of evidence you speak of? Why is not referenced by wpath or the Cass review or the various studies on how the approach taken has worked - a recent one in the us, several in Europe? Please link.

(Oh and please, I beg you, don’t make me write a very very boring post about how “two spirit” is a modern fabrication, and “hijra” are not actually “trans”. It’s very dull indeed for everyone and it makes you look really culturally insensitive.)

I’m a cultural historian working in the history of ideas, feminism, and gender studies/history of homosexuality.

Go on, then. You show me some concrete evidence in past historical records of “transness” that isn’t at all linked to or part of ideas of same-sex desire, sex roles, gender stereotypes, rhetoric, medicine/mental illness, religion or magic.

I challenge you. Just after you have posted all the links to those studies that show “trans” has a “heritable”, “polygenic” basis (which you brought up, not me, so you should produce evidence of them.)

I disagree with you entirely. You may be a historian, but you clearly understand very little about transness, what it is, or its history.

Of course how people interpret different forms of human diversity and experience will be affected by the historical and cultural context of the time and place, but that doesn't mean that certain forms of diversity didn't 'exist' in the past as they exist in the present. There have always been gay people and there have always been trans people, although how these differences were understood, written about, how people lived with these differences at the time, etc, will be different.

What is your area of expertise?

Yes trans people have existed throughout history and there is absolutely plenty of 'traces' of them, in writing, diaries, books, records, etc.

I’n a historian. There isn’t. Please read my posts. There is plenty of evidence of same-sex attraction, of crossdressing for all sorts of other reasons, and plenty of evidence of women and girls wanting the same freedoms as men. There’s no evidence of “trans” that is not part of one or more of those things.

I don't understand this at all. Being trans is separate to being frustrated about not having the vote, education or power, and it's also separate to sexual attraction.

Why don’t you understand this, if you’ve been reading my posts? There is no evidence of anything like the modern idea of “trans” in the past that wasn’t part of ideas about sexuality or “sex roles”. It simply wasn’t available to people as a concept. Dressing or performing like the opposite sex was thought of as either evidence of homosexuality, or of simply wishing you could adopt a different role in life.

How difficult is it to understand that the way people think of themselves is historically and culturally specific to particular times and places? If a metaphysical concept didn’t exist, people didn’t think of themselves in that way. “Trans” is not a material fact, but a metaphysical idea. It’s like saying that the Ancient Greeks “really” believed in Catholic transubstantiation in 500 BC, even though they had no concept of the Christian God.

Ah, okay 😆

Is it your contention that in the past, lots of people were transgender in the modern sense (despite leaving absolutely no trace of this at all, in any writing or personal self-expression or in the millions and millions of diaries, books, records etc.), but only now and since around the 1970s have we understood this phenomenon exists that there’s no evidence of in the first place?

Yes trans people have existed throughout history and there is absolutely plenty of 'traces' of them, in writing, diaries, books, records, etc.

Or were the people in the past wrong in thinking that they were same-sex attracted/frustrated by not having the vote or any education or power, and actually they were secretly “trans”, a concept they had no knowledge of?

I don't understand this at all. Being trans is separate to being frustrated about not having the vote, education or power, and it's also separate to sexual attraction.

The reason people aren't answering your "question" is because they entirely disagree with the assumptions that form it's logic and there is no way to answer it without endorsing that logic.

Do I think that trans people should be allowed to use changing rooms and toilets in accordance with their gender? Absolutely.

Do I think that trans women should be banned from all women's services? Absolutely not.

Do I think that there could be a narrow set of circumstances in which it would be permissible to restrict women's services by birth sex? Yes. Just like there are services that might cater to disabled women, or black women, or mothers, or older women, or lesbian women or many other specific groups.

In that case, do you want to engage with my post on the history of homosexuality?

Is it your contention that in the past, lots of people were transgender in the modern sense (despite leaving absolutely no trace of this at all, in any writing or personal self-expression or in the millions and millions of diaries, books, records etc.), but only now and since around the 1970s have we understood this phenomenon exists that there’s no evidence of in the first place?

Or were the people in the past wrong in thinking that they were same-sex attracted/frustrated by not having the vote or any education or power, and actually they were secretly “trans”, a concept they had no knowledge of?

It would take me significantly longer to compile a long list of research for you, than for you to share one specific paper that you so cryptically referenced.

I wonder why you insist that I "go first"? Is it possible that you don't actually know which study you are talking about? And you want to reserve the right to retrospectively declare it to be whatever I happen to share?

Or are you so confident that the twenty-first century has got it all absolutely right

Oh my goodness no. we have a long way to go. But do I think "gender dysphoria" offers a significant improvement in scientific understanding relative to "moral insanity". Absolutely, of course.

studies which have evidenced a likely hereditable polygenic underpinning driven by sex hormone-signalling genes responsible for virilization

Can you post links to these studies^^, and then I’ll point it out?

Which study are you referring to here?

Understanding and kindness need to go both ways. If your daughter slips up, her friend should be understanding, just as she is trying to be understanding of Ron's feelings. Ron doesn't own all the rights to consideration and thoughtfulness.

Still avoiding addressing the issue of middle aged males undressing/showering alongside women and girls?

How very surprising.

And it sounds like you need to educate yourself about AGP. Quite a few high profile trans identifying men, such as Andrea Long Chu and Debbie Hayton, have been very clear about the fetishistic base for their feelings of being “trans”.

Where’s this evidence? The one study that doesn’t actually show this at all, and then was debunked because it didn’t replicate?

What happened to transvestites, then? Did they all disappear around 2005? Genuinely interested to know.

“Gender dysphoria” is itself a historically invented and specific term. Roll back three or four decades earlier, and you have “neurasthenia” and “moral insanity”, both of which covered “gender non-confirming” behaviour in their diagnostic criteria.

Why shouldn’t we revert to “moral insanity” as a term for “gender dysphoria”? Or are you so confident that the twenty-first century has got it all absolutely right?