Guardian: weaponised emotional blackmail from 14yo 'trans' athlete

'Same logic as punch a NAZI''

This is an example of the hyperbole that they use to justify violence. Sometimes violence is justified, and being oppressed by Nazis - as in literal Nazis - is one of the best example of justifiable violence I can think of.

But being subjected to the wrong pronouns/not being allowed use the toilet
you'd prefer to use/only getting the same human rights as everyone else doesn't add up to the kind of oppression to which violence is a proportionate response.

I know I'm stating the obvious, but it's obviously not obvious at all to these TRA 'heroes'.

bitches be like, "I'm a trans ally" and then you check their TERF kill count and it's 0

Oh, that's going to encourage people to be trans allies, for sure!

Oh well now I've changed my mind and I really want to share enclosed spaces with them. Be kiiiind people.

These delightful messages from the ‘Be Kind’ TRAs.

This. Trans ideology is deeply homophobic. I have seen quotes from people that they would rather have a trans daughter than a gay son.

Another thing that blows my mind is the number of people who swallowed the idea that acceptance of people 'being trans' is exactly the same thing as acceptance of people being gay - and never once engaged their brain to think through the glaring differences.

Not least of which, as you point out, that trans ideology is startlingly homophobic.

If you override sex with 'gender' you also invalid the concept of same sex attraction. Seeing young lesbians being pressurised into accepting men into their dating pools on the grounds that they 'identify as woman' is utterly regressive.

Then of course, as you say, the fact that young gay people are strongly over represented amongst those signing up for experimental hormone therapy and surgeries

It’s the vulnerable gay and autistic children who are on the front line here Evie. Gender Ideology is seriously homophobic. Remember the doctors in the Tavistock boasting about transing the gay away or Susie Green of Mermaids revealing in her TED talk how her homophobic husband destroyed all of her son’s toys when he was four because they were too girly. Of course he wanted to be a girl. Girls got toys. We fought so hard for gay rights and the second we got them people like you worked to destroy them so that men could be happy. Stonewall, once an LGB charity, described homosexuality as a genital fetish and akin to racism. Young lesbians were pressured to have sex with transwomen. What is good about this?

Absolutely, it's far more likely that the brains of people with similar life experiences will look alike because they are firing up the same neurons than that some mysterious process puts sexed brains into embryos but sometimes doesn't match the sex of the brain to the genetics. Occam's razor tells me it's probably 'primary childrearer, mental load carrier, food preparer and working as a nurse' brain rather than lady brain.

There are studies which claim brain differences, and studies which reject this. I tend to believe the ones which reject it, except in so far as the brain is plastic, and shaped by experience from day one. So many studies on small children show that caregivers treat boys and girls differently even when they are tiny babies.

But regardless of the brain studies, let's look behaviour. Suppose there is a difference in male and female brains, and transwomen have female brains - why then is their behaviour aligned with men not women, sexual violence and threatening behaviour in particular? If they have "female" brains but persist in sexual and other violence, it is proof that the brain does not control the body, and that male bodies drive the problem; so even though their brains are female we need women-only facilities and other provision. Suppose now that there is no difference in male and female brains - well, we're back to square one and need women-only provision.

So the "female brain/male brain" theory is irrelevant.

I don't have a black belt in neuroscience😏but my understanding is that babies' brains are not blank slates, they are actually full of complex interconnections, and as the baby grows, some of those interconnections are strengthened [e.g. I'm guessing: the ones to do with walking upright, and talking]
and less or not used interconnections weaken and maybe even atrophy.

So those 'pink' and 'blue' messages that babies get from day one - as has been shown in experiments where the same baby was interacted with differently, depending on whether it was said to be a boy or a girl - reinforce pathways in the brain.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they found differences between adult men's and women's brains, given the differences in how boys and girls are brought up, as GriseldaandMike says.

Some boys and girls resist the stereotyping more than others, and have experiences that are more related to the opposite sex in childhood - tomboys like me who played with Meccano sets and Airfix kits and learnt skills - and possibly brain connections? - that enabled me to work in a techie field as an adult.

As I write that, I realise that it may be less acceptable for boys to crossover like that in childhood, and have 'non-boy' experiences, because of the lower status of 'feminine' things. Perhaps that's why there is a greater spread of 'gender presentation' in women than in men, some of us are womanly or girly and some of us are not, whereas there isn't such a wide spread of difference in dress etc amongst men.
And perhaps - this is just speculation - fewer diverse interconnections in adult men's brains?

But that's not the same as saying there is a 'male brain' and a 'female brain' and that there can be mix-ups in the assembly area resulting in a male body getting a female brain or vice versa.

No!
There's lots of enthusing about chatting to 'the other girls' in the loos, and tinkling jewellery.

None of those dreary conversations about how to get grass stains out of clothes.

There are behavioural differences between men and women. Some of them are socially driven, some of them are hormonally driven, and some are the result of men taking advantage, consciously or unconsciously, of their superior physical strength. These three things intersect in very complex ways.

I used to think that hormones were just an excuse, but having gone through pregnancy, breastfeeding and the menopause, I'm now convinced that they impact behaviour - I can remember my visceral reaction when my babies cried, and my absolutely instinctive (and astonishingly selfless) responses when one was in danger. And having gone through the menopause, I am so much arsier than I used to be. That one might be driven more by maturity and increasing self-confidence, but my lovey-dovey, maternal, make-it-all-better, oil-on-troubled-waters earth-mother vibe has dialled right down in the past decade.

But the thing is... trans people, until they start taking artificial hormones, have just the same hormonal balance as others of their sex.

So whatever drives trans-ness, it's not hormones. Which leave us with brain structure. Which leaves us with motivated research.

But it's never the caring duties, child rearing, cleaning out the fridge bit of 'femaleness' they identify with is it? It's always the bits of femaleness that haven't existed or haven't been female /exclusively female coded for most of human evolution (heels, skirts, long hair etc). It's never since I was 4 I dreamt of working in carehome and I just love clearing the crumbs out of the cutlery drawer is it?

It cares about the brain in so far as it helps achieve viable fertile offspring. Which can be on a group level rather than for the individual, some animals are evolved to behave in highly cooperative manners.

I'm intrigued by the speculation that homosexual behaviour evolved because a few extra non reproducing adults in the group advantage the wider gene line. Though it's also possible it was genetically speaking an unwanted byproduct of high sex drive.

Why evolution would want some critters to think they're the other sex is unclear. It might want /flexibility/ in normally sexed roles, if there is a shortage of females we need the males to chip in with babysitting duties, if there is a shortage of males we need the females to join in defending the territory against interlopers.

If there were an actual, quick and easy medical test - such as a brain scan - that could identify that someone was 'true trans', then the trans activists would not be happy. How many people who identify as trans would pass such a test? They want self-ID, not an actual test they could fail. They also want to be able to redefine everyone else (hence the 'cis' thing).

Evolution doesn't care about the brain it only cares about viable and fertile offspring. Evolution also doesn't care about if that makes anybody happy or not.

I am laughing at this one.

You would provide the anaconda gerbils and feel righteous and not once consider the needs of the gerbils.

At least you are honest about it.

No. This is one of the activists' (and parents' - speaking from personal experience) "reaches" used to try to convince others (and, themselves, I imagine) that embryo/fetus/baby can have one physical sex and the other "brain" sex in the womb, especially if the mother is undergoing IVF. Apparently too many hormones in the womb make it happen. Just no. Sex chromosomes are what determine sex.

The word 'theory' doing a lot of work there. I was baking cakes the other day and there was an electrical surge during the time they were in the oven and they came out as sourdough buns, go figure.🤔

If men and women's brains are almost the same, why are men and women so very different?

Because they are physically different and society treats them differently, from the moment they are born (or even before). We are bombarded with 'girls are this', 'boys should be that' messages from day one. If the gender crap was actually inate men in the 18th century wouldn't have happily worn lace, heels, make up, wigs and pink because their 'man brains' would have objected.

There's an absolute flood of garbage science on the internet, not just on this topic - although this topic really does seem to attract it. Much of it can be found on what one might think were respectable websites.

Anyway, trans rights activists have realized that the "brain sex" idea is a two-edged sword. Even if we could ever prove there were definitive, objective, observable, measureable, and consistent differences between the brains of women and the brains of men, the trans right activists would right back where they'd started. What's the difference between observable differences in brains and observable differences in genitals? Both are physical organs.

Trans-identified people can only claim to have opposite sex brains because right now, we cannot reliably identify consistent differences in the brains of men and women. If we could, I'd bet the house that transwomen would be shown to have male brains. How could a physical body that has otherwise developed as a normal male body have one organ that is female for no reason? The likelihood is vanishingly small.

I'm very confused about the whole debate re. female and male minds. When you Google it, there are loads on articles saying male and female brains are almost the same, and then there are loads of articles saying the opposite!

This article from Stanford University says they're very different:
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different/

But this write-up of the field by a neuroscientist says that any differences are tiny: https://theconversation.com/you-dont-have-a-male-or-female-brain-the-more-brains-scientists-study-the-weaker-the-evidence-for-sex-differences-158005

I really don't get it.

But one thig occurs to me: If men and women's brains are almost the same, why are men and women so very different?

Great post.

(And if objectively discernible "mind sex" really was a thing, would TRAs agree that only those in whom "female mind sex"could be shown to exist should be allowed to change their physical sex characteristics and be accepted as members of the other sex? Of course not.)

Too much self regard in that youth. No thought for others. Either male or a psychopath!

Third Fiddle, well, imagine that. It sounds exhausting. Kind of like multiple personalities. I appreciate the clarification.