“Transwomen are women”

irretating: "Do they have larger hippocampus's because they use that area of the brain more than the average person, or is it because of their larger hippocampus' that they're drawn to jobs which involve some sort of navigation. The latter is the sort of logic used by blue brain/pink brain proponents."

Exactly. And we all know that the scientific consensus is that they have a larger hippocampus because they use that area of the brain more. You can see the same effect in musicians, and in other people who practise a skill that requires the use of a particular part of the brain. The brain is plastic - we all know this now. Cordelia Fine is good on this, but it shouldn't even need to be said - the idea that there are such things as "male" brains and "female brains" is positively Victorian.

There is some research out there that seems to show transwomen have some more typically 'female' brain architecture, but not being a scientist/medic I don't know how legit it is

It's not legit.

Read Cordelia Fine's 'Delusions of Gender' for the most comprehensive summary of ALL the major 'brain sex' studies.

Short version? Innately there are almost no differences. Any differences observed in adulthood are either irrelevant to function (how thick your corpus callosum is, or how heavy your brain is is neither here nor there) or entirely a result of environmental experiences due to treatment of the sexes being different)
Or, and this was an eye opener for me, differences are in fact falsely concluded by either researcher bias or plain old bad methodology.

I see them as real women except for relationship purposes'

Read: I see them as real women right up until the point where it will affect me, instead of just women.

Bah, messed up the italics. The first couple of sentences are a quote from Mistresssiggi

^Has anyone brought up the taxi driver brain yet?
To know if there were innate differences you would surely need to start your studies with newborns rather than adults. Our brains are affected by our lives.^

I was just about to @Mistresssiggi

Do they have larger hippocampus's because they use that area of the brain more than the average person, or is it because of their larger hippocampus' that they're drawn to jobs which involve some sort of navigation. The latter is the sort of logic used by blue brain/pink brain proponents.

As I said in my post you responded to, but deliberately left out, the discussion that transwomen are women and the ''male brain/female brain' thing' are separate issues.

They can refer to she/he. As in female/male. Woman/man.

Oh and not let us forget that there may well be differences between the way in which 'gay and straight' people poo as well thrown into the mix (so to speak).

So if TRAs brought up that men and women poo differently (actually, I'm sure there is scientific evidence to support this nonsense), would and should it be taken seriously?

Has anyone brought up the taxi driver brain yet?
To know if there were innate differences you would surely need to start your studies with newborns rather than adults. Our brains are affected by our lives.

Elendon that BBC link.... the BBC actually posted that homophobic article and are standing behind it.

Having a sexual orientation is now officially 'transphobic' in the UK according to the establishment. The T just ate the LGB. We're supposed to be shouting 'yay'.

Stop the fucking world, I want to get off.

Trans ideologues believe in a 'gender essence' which resides in the brain. It's in their interests to prove that male and female brains are different, and to find the seat of this 'gender'.

What they've done is subvert the concepts of sex and gender. Biological sex is physical. Gender is the social construct. Or at least that's how feminism had it. Now TRAs say that gender is in the brain and biological sex is the social construct. In other words, a penis can actually be female if the 'innate gender' is female. That's a huge, huge leap and this is why I think we need rigorous scientific research covering tens of thousands of cases (not just the few dozen in existing surveys).

@NotTerfNorCis Yes but the transwomen are women and the brains are different are two very different issues. They are not linked.

Let's start with the basics. Sexuality and sex are different. Gender is a social construct. I've known this since the 1970s. It's not difficult.

That is why the premise of the OP is wrong to begin with. And it's their second thread on this.

If you all want to discuss the differences between the brains, then do so under a heading that is clear and concise.

The thread says: 'please can someone explain the thinking behind this
[transwomen are women] to me. I am naive enough to think that there must be some- is it the “male brain/female brain” thing?'

If you debate with TRAs then sooner or later they bring up brain differences. There has been some research in this area, Guillamon is a name that keeps cropping up. Personally I feel that, since society is bending itself over backwards to accommodate trans ideology, we should have a lot more research into it, involving tens of thousands of people if possible. At the moment we're going off tiny surveys and subjective opinions. My guess is that we'd find that 'trans' is nonsense except in a minuscule number of cases of sexual dysphoria, which might eventually be treatable without a 'sex change'.

sorry, that should be 'nobody knows what their own chromosomes are', which I think is woefully naive about biological reproduction but is something I've heard the 'trans women are women' arguers say.

Liney

R U on twitter? try challenging him on it. Don't think he likes being called a TERF

I have also been trying to understand the thinking behind this claim. As a general principle, if I'm disagreeing with someone I would always want to make sure that the thought process behind their statements is what I think it is. (And it was realising that I was failing at this with the gender-critical feminist approach that set me off on the route to peak trans.)

It is difficult to follow with this one though because it seems that often, it's a statement of affirmation rather than logical conclusion of an argument. It's saying "I believe trans women feel how they say they feel, and I am willing to expand my own social category of 'women' to include them." Opposition to this is perceived as a) refusing to believe them, and b) unfairly refusing access to that social category. So when they hear "but trans women can't be women," they hear it in the sense of "but non-white people can't be British" or "but a woman who's been married to a man can't be a lesbian" - it's both bigotry and refusing to accept the validity of someone's feelings in favour of your external perceptions.

As for why feelings get a higher status than biology on this one I'm less clear. As best I understand it, the people who believe that trans women literally are women (rather than just, should be included in the same social category as biological women) would view it in the same way as intersex conditions. So, if someone was born with CAIS (was biologically XY but developed as female) and did not discover this until puberty, it would be cruel to say "but you can't be a girl, despite your female body and your upbringing as female and your belief that you are female - your chromosomes say no." For a trans woman, the physical body & upbringing as well as the chromosomes might be male, but she has the same belief as the intersex woman that she genuinely is a woman and therefore it would be the same level of cruelty to disagree with her. Throw in a heavy dose of beliefs that 'biology is complicated, sex is on a spectrum, nobody knows what their chromosomes are anyway'* and bingo, trans women are women?

For this to hold up it seems to me that you do have to accept gender identity as some kind of inevitable, internal state, and at that point I don't follow. I also don't follow why this same logic wouldn't apply to e.g. Rachel Dolezal as well as Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. But as far as I can follow it, this is what underlies it.

It's not sarcasm. It's homophobic.

And you are deliberately hijacking this thread. If you wish you start a thread regarding the differences between brains. Do so.

I'm wondering, how many heterosexual male TRAs are attracted to and would consider dating or have intimate relationships with transwomen?

This is a question they should be bombarded with and an answer to which the should be hounded for.

Speaks volumes really.

@Elendon Is that sarcasm? Can't tell, sorry.

There's some 10-year-old research that shows gay people had brain structure more similar to the opposite sex than to their own.

Which begs the question, how can we tell the brain difference between for example a gay man and a transwoman who is attracted to men?

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7456588.stm

www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-says-brains-of-gay/

www.theguardian.com/science/2008/jun/16/neuroscience.psychology

Zero time for men (of whatever gender presentation) who tell me (a woman) who I have to consider a woman. Especially when I know they don’t really believe it themselves.

If I am being generous, maybe some of them haven’t thought it all through, it which case STFU. But other men plainly have just found a politically virtuous looking way of putting women down and makingnthem vulnerable and those men are loving it. Hence all their smug cheerleading for the encroachment on women’s spaces etc.

There is some research out there that seems to show transwomen have some more typically 'female' brain architecture, but not being a scientist/medic I don't know how legit it is

There is no such thing as male or female brain architecture.

I object to the term 'gay and straight brains'

It's homophobic.