Transgender brains are more like their desired gender.

Ambiguity..sorry....The sci fi comment was related to me being able to imag8ne that it is possible to have a male brain, not an indication of a male brain ( because that would be silly'

Suppose for a moment it was shown that there is a male brain, then it may well turn out that I have such a male brain.( I like sci fi, and have a vivid and lively imagination)

Can I state that should this happen I would be beyond unhappy to have to get changed in the gents. Because the abuse I have suffered has nothing to do with my brain and everything to do with my body, which is ( to my unending disappointment) clearly female

If there really is such a thing as "gender identity

There isn't.......and nobody really had one at all before the 1980's ( & the vast majority don't now, either).......before then crippling dysphoria was classified as a mental health issue. Body/mind integration has always been the goal of most therapies.

Lots of money must be getting channeled in to funding research which finds scientific 'explanations' for transgenderism. It is the weak link - and everyone knows it.

It's a complete red herring.

Brain patterns are irrelevant. It's about genetics and physiology.

A few brain patterns are not what makes you male or female. If you are of the sex class that produces the sperm cells you are male.

The fact I even have to type the above means that one side of this debate is arguing in bad faith and their agenda is not about defending truth as they see it, but about the twisting of truth to execute a power grab. Everyone knows what makes someone male or female.

Glad it helped, TheInebriati. I was trying to make sense of the claims by looking at the maths, and once I thought of the data like that, I could.

And excellent question,SetYourselfOnFire. I shall remember that.

So, no brain damaged patients with sudden gender dysphoria. Conversely, we do have emerging evidence that dementia patients who had medically transitioned can get very upset at finding themselves so altered. Which suggests something other than an innate gender identity, independent of one's body, is at the root of gender dysphoria.

This is an interesting field for me, since my gran had brain damage (caused by reckless tomboyish behaviour when she was 17 or 18) which was localised in a particular area of the brain that was later found to affect certain personality traits. Personality traits she had, and which made her markedly different from the rest of the family, but of course back then they had no idea why. She had no cognitive or physical impairments afterwards, so they never really connected the two.

No matter how many times they are debunked the zombie lies never die.

If there really is such a thing as "gender identity" it has to be in a localized brain area. There should be patients who suffer brain damage who wake up suddenly believing they're the other gender. We should be able to study these people and determine where the region is located. There are clinical cases of every mental precept the brain holds but I've yet to hear of a case like this--and I searched the literature.

Not read the whole thread so sorry if I’m repeating someone else but regardless of differences, there is no evidence that physical differences have an impact on personality traits so it proves nothing.

There is also something else to consider: data fishing. You take enough different measurements and by chance some will be different, these differences would not be replicated in a different sample population, and would disappear if you increased sample size. It is just a random affect,

Brilliant explanation CharlieParley . I can visualise that from your explanation much more easily than I can extract it from the article.

What about the brains of women who’ve not spent years practising labour-intensive femininity but who don’t think they’re blokes?

[offers brain to science]

"Gender specific activity" sounds to me like they're measuring sexual response, in which case what they have detected is that some adolescents are gay.

I can identify (bleurgh) with all of that, SomeDyke - though as I'm not lesbian, I think it's down to Asperger's.

Dammit, then we're essentially saying that minus the social-norm-reinforcement, (a lot of) boy stuff is often more fun than (a lot of) girl stuff.

And then I wonder if there's any point complaining when 'gender neutral' gets taken to mean 'default to male', and I combust in a cloud of incoherence all over again.

“more closely resembled that of non-transgender boys and girls of their desired gender”

I've looked into lots of studies like this. And when you dig into the details, the picture painted is like this:

Draw a line representing whatever particular sex difference in the brain they are attempting to measure. At one end, the male brain, at the other the female brain like this:

100__0

With male at 100 and female at 0

The male study subjects who identify as trans are positioned at 90. They've moved in the direction of the female end of the line. (Usually with the help of opposite sex hormones and/or by blocking their own.)

One can now claim that those positioned at 90 more closely resemble the result of the opposite sex than those positioned at 100.

Well, yes they do. What is not accurate is the claim that those at 90 are more similar to those at 0 than they are to those at 100. However, that's the claim often made. It's hard to spot, because the differences tend to be minute (the ends of the line aren't really 100 and 0 but at something like 56.7823 and 56.7896 with the subjects who identify as trans situated .0005 or so away from their own sex average).

Add to that the lack of controlling for sexuality, the tiny number of study subjects, and the rather hyperbolic way of presenting artificially produced minute shifts towards the opposite sex in people identifying as trans as evidence of well, anything, really, makes this an even more ludicrous claim than it already is.

"I realise I've just described lesbianism as a 'preference' there rather than an orientation and protected characteristic. Don't eat me while I input some caffeine."

I'll wait 'til after, you'll be tastier with some caffeine inside you!

Why are many lesbians gnc (if they are?) My thought was always that at some point during girlhood, I realised that for whatever reason, I wasn't that interested in boys in the way other girls seemed to be. So the whole social thing going on as regards appearance/pass-times/preferences that the other girls seemed to be going through aimed at formation of their personality which was supposed to end up at an adult female who liked chaps nope, not interested. Better things to do like just getting on doing the stuff that I liked doing. Rather than perhaps any positive inclination towards gnc behaviour, possibly just that the overtly feminine stuff passed me by, hence it was the failure of the feminine socialisation as regards allowed activities and allowed appearance to stick, rather than necessarily turning towards masculine things because they were seen as masculine. But perhaps also meant that I was more used to be being seen as different, and hence not the same prohibitions on doing masculine things because they were masculine, if they looked like fun to me. Although I will admit to feeling that the things that fascinated the other girls just seemed rather boring and pointless to me...........

I think you have to be very careful because your brain wants to see patterns...like lesbian and none conforming where it may not really exist, and society may also tend to push lesbians into a gender none conforming role , because being lesbian is already outside of norms?

Very difficult to untangle even with the possibility of controlled experiments

Urgh. I realise I've just described lesbianism as a 'preference' there rather than an orientation and protected characteristic. Don't eat me while I input some caffeine.

The cognitive bias is built right into the study with the words “gender-specific activity.”

Precisely. And even if it's true that girls are more likely to do X, it most definitely is not true that all girls do X or that all boys do Y, regardless of how they identify. And, we will never know just how much of an impact socialisation has had on the girls and boys who do/don't do X and Y. Despite the amount of parents who say things like, "it's all nature because I bought my dd a truck once yet she still loves pink", their dd did not grow up in a social vacuum.

I think there probably is some truth that stereotypically feminine preferences and 'feminine gender' feelings cluster somewhat.

I can't quite articulate this (fuzzy brain today) but we often say of girls with 'boyish' interests and clothing preferences that they would probably just turn out to be lesbian if left be.

So we do assume there that two things that on the face of it have no connection sexual preference, and preferred clothing/interests are linked. Does that half-thought make sense to anyone or shall I go and drink some stronger coffee?

Rubbish. Trans women are men. They will never have any the benefits nature gives females (even longevity only improves if a man is castrated before puberty).

Men's brains are slightly larger than womens, so if a man has a ladybrain, wouldn't it rattle around in his cranium?

Some men's brains seem to be in their dicks. Probably quite a snug fit.

The cognitive bias is built right into the study with the words “gender-specific activity.”

What exactly is a gender-specific activity? How do they determine which are women’s activities and which are men’s?

Men's brains are slightly larger than womens, so if a man has a ladybrain, wouldn't it rattle around in his cranium? I can see how that would be distressing tbf.

Wait, I thought that trans women were women. So how can their brains be "more like" women's brains than men's brains. By definition, they must be 100 percent women's brains just like their penises are 100 percent lady penises. Otherwise how is this Science.