Elliot Page undergoes “lifesaving” “top surgery”

I'm reading 'The XX Brain' at the moment. Just started, but this is in the 1st chapter:

'It is important to point out that although male and female brains are to some extent wired differently and exhibit some biochemical differences, this doesn't have a big effect on behaviour. To be perfectly clear, there is nothing in our biology to justify the gender pay gap in equality, wages or opportunities. There is also no scientific basis for a 'gendered brain.''

(emphasis mine)

Dr Lisa Mosconi, director of the Women's Brain Initiative, associate prof of Neuroscience

Also WeavingWandering do agree that as you think brain scans show that someone is trans, then doctors should do brain scans to check before letting anyone have blockers or hormones or surgery that they might regret? And obviously no self ID as we have the scans?

Goody gumdrops. You sound like exactly the person I need to explain all this to me.

So we have an egg and a Y sperm, which fuse. Then we will have our little male morula, and then the cell differentiation starts happening, including the formation of neural cells.

What makes a brain made of male cells in a body of male cells female? Even if there is a configurational difference shared by some female brains and some male brains, why does that make the latter female?

Why are people being othered from their genetic sex, on the basis of it? Surely accepting differences is what diversity initiatives are about?
Would you say people with slightly unusual brains for humans weren't human? Of course not, there's even a phrase for that: accepting neurodiversity.

So why is it different here?

WeavingWandering So why haven't you provided any evidence to back up your claims about how brains are 'made'? What do you have to say about the articles I posted?

@CuriousaboutSamphire I’ve literally published papers on neuroscience… I’m always happy to read more because I’m a nerd but I hope I’d know my stuff at that point.

What if Paris Lees/Munroe Bergdorf/Elliot Page had brain scans and it showed they weren't trans after all?

Bergdorf did do exactly that in the C4 prog What makes a woman.

It was inconclusive.

Now I have read all of it and I feel a tad queasy!

That was nothing like a logic path @WeavingWandering NOTHING!

Before you try again can I also tell you that many of the women who post here are really well educated, many in areas around human physiology etc. You'd have to pull the wool REALLY hard to confuse us!

if you look at brain scans of trans people, their brains are literally made like the brain of their identified gender

No. This is false. In some very small group studies some minor similarities in brain structure between homosexual MTF trans people and the control group of women have been observed that are not shared with the control men. When the group was controlled for sexual orientation heterosexual MTF trans people didn't have these similarities. So they appear to be dependent on sexual orientation. Furthermore the effect of brain plasticity or taking cross sex hormones has not been ruled out.

Heterosexual MTF trans people were found (in the couple of studies where this was looked at) to have no specific similarity with the female control population, but have a difference from the men in an area related to body self perception.

This is even before looking at socialisation, and considering why you see an outlier male brain as a female brain rather than an outlier male brain.

if you look at brain scans of trans people, their brains are literally made like the brain of their identified gender See, I was actually reading your post @WeavingWandering with a truly openmind, quite prepared to respond.

Then I go to that! And al I can say is NO NO NO NO NO No and many more times NO! That is eminently wrong for so very many reasons, most of which have been given already! You cannot believe that! Well, you can, but may I suggest you do a bit more reading of gold standard, peer reviewed science before you think to say it out loud at work, amongst people who have medical degrees?

And yes @Cleanandpress that lept out at me too!

How is a brain literally made like a gender?

What is a gender 'like' that it can be seen in the structure of a brain?

Utter utter bullshit.

if you look at brain scans of trans people, their brains are literally made like the brain of their identified gender - which makes it a different scenario again

"Literally made like"

I am enamoured of this language, it is quite endearing. It suggests a cute story where babies are found under bushes with elves and fairies churning them out in little workshops under the toadstools and occasionally they literally put a male brain they made with frogs and snails and puppy dogs tails in a female baby. Sweet but sexist story.

Does that mean a man who wears UK size 5 shoes has female feet?

It means she is female, clearly!

Maybe gender issues are far more basic than teenagers today really understand. I remember being very scared of the effect my morphing female body had on the opposite sex. Add to this the peer pressure to bare virtually all on social media and you create real problems.
I wasn’t ready to “show off” my new body at 14/15 and wore baggy clothes to hide the curves and boobs. I did grow into it though so by late teens and early twenties I was ready to embrace my fully developed body. Happy to show it off and confident to share it.
Social media puts so much pressure on young girls it’s no surprise that some are so petrified of their changing bodies that when medical science presents them with a solution they are more than happy to go down this road. We know that the teenage brain is immature and lacks the ability to think rationally or risk assess. They do not understand permanence.
More research needs to be done on the long term effect of hormone blockers. But for some individuals putting a temporary block on puberty particularly when it is early may give their brains ( and their peer group) time to catch up so they don’t feel so isolated.
I do not support hormone blockers but if a child is truly suicidal because of their body maybe it would give them time to have appropriate psychiatric treatment and also the control they feel they are missing.

Were you confusing sex and gender there, do you think?

And it’s been repeatedly proven that gender confirmation surgery

Please, please explain why removing breasts has anything to do with having a male gender, @WeavingWandering ?

What have sexed bodies got to do with gender, which is an innate feeling? To say that having no breasts "confirms" you are male is hugely offensive to trans men with breasts.

Ah, the ladybrain fallacy.

Also aren't there an infinite number of genders? So why would brains only be gendered male or female?

So WeavingWandering, can you answer these questions about the brain scan issue please?

"if you look at brain scans of trans people, their brains are literally made like the brain of their identified gender."

I thought scientists had concluded that, while there are some tendencies for particular characteristics in male/female brains, it is actually not possible to tell for sure which are male and which are female just from looking at a brain scan. And in addition, the brain is plastic meaning that a lot of the way it develops depends on the environment of the person (eg. I have read things about how attachment issues in babies and small children can literally cause brain damage, because certain vital connections are not made, in very layman's terms!)

Also if brain scans can be used as a diagnostic tool, why don't doctors use this, particularly when deciding whether to put a child onto a lifetime medical pathway? What if a trans person had a brain scan and it showed they 'weren't actually transgender'? Would they have to revoke their trans status? What if Paris Lees/Munroe Bergdorf/Elliot Page had brain scans and it showed they weren't trans after all?

Just read this article on the BBC website:
"Adult brains cannot be neatly categorised into male brains and female brains either. In a study analysing 1,400 brain scans, neuroscientist Daphna Joel and colleagues found "extensive overlap between the distributions of females and males for all grey matter, white matter, and connections assessed". That is, overall we are more similar to each other than different."
www.bbc.com/future/article/20210524-the-gender-biases-that-shape-our-brains

P.S. Women tend to have smaller feet than men. Does that mean a man who wears UK size 5 shoes has female feet?

The brain thing all seems like a decades long No True Scotsman Fallacy.

For the uninitiated, the fallacy goes like this:

Person 1: no Scotsman puts salt on his porridge.
Person 2: Yerwot? My cousin Dan has salted his porridge every day for thirty years.
Person 1: Your cousin is it? Well, notrueScotsman puts salt on his porridge!

Possibly followed by:he should bugger back off to England with you!

Instead of questioning the original assumption in response to new information, fault is just found with later information to justify why it doesn't actually count.

At some point after some study or other, we developed some observations on how to distinguish a male brain and a female brain.

Male brains had this feature. Female brains had that feature. This was used to justify (in learned tones) why women were under-represented in well paid professions in various popsci magazines. Our brains, see?

Then, someone points out that some male humans may have a neurological feature after all and it's:

"No true male brain has that feature. Bugger off, you're a woman!"

All seems rather daft. We all trace our origins back to the fusion of one egg cell and one sperm cell. 99.982% of human babies born were conceived with an XX or XY karyotype, by the way. And there has been no significant correlation between people with intersex conditions and people who identify as transgender, so let's not discuss that. People with variations of sexual development have said to keep them out of it!

So there you are, with a single cell that resulted from the fusion of the X egg and a Y sperm, rapidly undergoing cell division. Every cell is an undifferentiated, i.e. unspecialised cell, but each is XY in the DNA in the cell nucleus. Then as the weeks progress, cell differentiation starts happening, which means specialised cells, like bone, skin, muscle, pancreas andneuralcells start forming. Every single one carrying the same DNA instructions as that first cell, but following different sections of it.

Of course the male fetus has a male brain! Where would a female brain have come from? No-one would talk of a male baby having female kidneys if his kidneys were smaller than usual for a boy, would they?