To believe that trans is not a mental health condition

[Babykoala1]

Preparing to get flamed of course and expecting feminists to come out in full fource. Just as the title suggests, I do not believe that trans is a mental health condition as much as homosexuality or even intersex would be considered a mental health condition. I'm sure here on Mumsnet I am in the minority and I will be absolutely flamed for having the audacity to compare it to homosexuality. But really? Why is homosexuality accepted as a part of biology yet trans can be automatically discarded as a mental health issue?

I'll get my coat

Bell curves, not absolutes.

Male and female brains are not disntinguishable until after societal influences have stamped /forced them to develop in particular ways through education/ indoctrination. Sterotyping.

Praise a boy for being strong and he will become stronger. similarly, praise a girl for being caring and she will develop those skills more. Through time the skills you focus on and develop leave a mark on the body and brain. As a society we praise girls for being caring and boys for being clever so you see the difference so you expect to see

Scientific American sept 2016 which is a review of many different studies

Find it hard to take your arguments seriously when you are so wrong on the basics.

The same special issue also showed that trans brains ( gender dysmorphia only) were similar to other trans brains. Not to women or men’s brains. But to other trans brains ( sex independent?)

Male and female brains are not disntinguishable until after societal influences have stamped /forced them to develop in particular ways through education/ indoctrination

This is factually incorrect. I posted a link if you don't understand. Male and female brains are different in many ways, and that includes the actual physical structure. It is nothing to do with stereotyping. Read up on it if you don't understand. But factually you are erroneous

Plasticity.

Yabu

So many reasons given above.

.

Trans people agree full well with everyone else what their body is.

You haven't come across 'the suck my lady dick' trans people?

Brains are plastic, because we don't rely on instinct, have the capacity to learn, and have fuzzy logic. If our brains were not plastic our behaviours would be more fixed and less adaptive to change.

So the study that shows some groups are alike cannot explain why. There are too many variables that can produce those results. It might be caused by hormones in utero, but the twin studies suggest it isnt.

Bluntness, societal influences changes the structure of a brain, like Beyond says; plasticity.

Look up London cab drivers and brain plasticity.

I think humans who think that we can change sex definitely have a screw loose.

That psychology today link is a load of bunk. All of the examples are on average Do you know how averages work, how bellcurves represent typical patterns that are not absolute, and what plasticity is?

White and grey matter
Can you guarantee, as a male (taking a wild stab in the dark there...) that your gray matter is used more than mine, and my white matter more than yours? Cause I'm autistic so my brain isn't behaving "typically" already. Doesn't stop me being female and birthing children though, regardless of my "extreme male" cough, disproved brain.

Chemistry
Note - "average" and "overall"

Structure
Just gonna c&p this bit (for the fun of it)
"Females often have a larger hippocampus, our human memory center. Females also often have a higher density of neural connections into the hippocampus. As a result, girls and women tend to input or absorb more sensorial and emotive information than males do. By “sensorial” we mean information to and from all five senses. If you note your observations over the next months of boys and girls and women and men, you will find that females tend to sense a lot more of what is going on around them throughout the day, and they retain that sensorial information more than men.
Additionally, before boys or girls are born, their brains developed with different hemispheric divisions of labor. The right and left hemispheres of the male and female brains are not set up exactly the same way. For instance, females tend to have verbal centers on both sides of the brain, while males tend to have verbal centers on only the left hemisphere. This is a significant difference. Girls tend to use more words when discussing or describing incidence, story, person, object, feeling, or place. Males not only have fewer verbal centers in general but also, often, have less connectivity between their word centers and their memories or feelings. When it comes to discussing feelings and emotions and senses together, girls tend to have an advantage, and they tend to have more interest in talking about these things."

Blood Flow and Brain Activity
Again, "often", "in general" and "tend to"

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Perhaps try reading a tad more critically in future, before suggesting we are the uneducated ones, yes love? :)

Well I guess men’s brains are bigger. and next we hear that men’s brains are significantly different and better and we should just tie ourselves back to the kitchen sink and the only reason we don’t feature in society isn’t the historic patricarchal regime caused by physical differences, but our natural inability to understand anything.

And I gather you didn’t read the articles I suggested? I skimmed yours but was not convinced. Suggest you read the comments also to that article.

Oh for goodness sake. There is a shit ton of scientific articles. The Male and female brain is different. No two ways about it.

Oh and whilst I'm here, the world isn't flat and no Elvis isn't still alive.

Sigh.

Lol.

In that 'Psychology Today' article, the words 'often' and 'tend to' were used a lot. 'Female brains tend to.....' 'male brains often....'

I was under the impression that there are certain brain characteristics that are more prevalent in male or female brains, but that the opposite sex brain may still have those characteristics and it doesn't mean anything. Ultimately you can't tell for sure if it's a male or female brain from a brain scan.

Oh for goodness sake. There is a shit ton of scientific articles.

And a shit ton to say there is no difference which would suggest it's not conclusive.

Ultimately you can't tell for sure if it's a male or female brain from a brain scan.

Absolutely. The idea that brains are sexed is sexist crap, which is why it's so popular with genderists.

It's a dreadfully regressive movement. Look at Butterfly. A little boy doesn't conform to stereotypes. His dad hits him and his mum tells him only girls like girly things. No wonder the kid assumes he's intrinsically "wrong" and needs to change sex.

The Male and female brain is different

a neuro surgeon could not look at a brain and tell you if it belonged to a man or a woman

Yy prawn (and everyone else)

a neurosurgeon could not look at a brain and tell you if it belonged to a man or a woman

Well I should think not, unless she had super special eyes that could SEE brain function, brain chemistry, blood flow rate and brain activity.

Funnily the second respondent on your Quora link even points out that identifying a person's sex chromosomes based on their bodily structure isn't 100% accurate; there's a lot of overlap. XY tend to be taller, tend to have broader shoulders, XX tend to have broader hips. Female genitalia would tend to indicate no Y chromosome, almost all of the time, but NOT all of the time.

Not being able to say definitively does not mean you aren't able to say without a reasonable degree of certainty. If be more interested to know how likely a brain expert was to correctly sex a brain - that would be more useful in my opinion.

I haven't read too much about this if I'm honest, I'm pleased the conversation has gone this way :)

You might enjoy this thread Rat : www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2908577-Pink-brains-and-blue-brains

Ok all I can say is wow 😳

Let me tell you all a story.

In 2004 I gave birth to, possibly, the most beautiful little girl ever.

By the age of 3/4 this little girl would refuse to wear anything remotely feminine or play with “girls” toys.
At the age of 8 I found a scrap of paper on which she had written “I fancy girls so what”.
At the age of 11 this girl told me she was gay.
At the age of 13 this girl told me she didn’t relate to being female whatsoever and that in her mind she was male.
This girl did everything she could to disguise that she was physically female including cropping her hair and wearing male clothing.
This girl is now my son.

There is zero doubt in my mind, his mind or in the mind of anyone who knows him that my son should have been born male.

You can tell me I’m wrong, you can tell him he’s wrong but it is what it is.

I’d just like to also point out that my son doesn’t have any mental health issues but does require support and guidance on his options - unfortunately there is very limited help available and we’re currently 17 months on a waiting list for the GID clinic in London.

Did you read the thread?

What looks like a tendency towards certain traits by the two sexes is more likely a product of brain plasticity rather than innate.

I say this because in Russia 58% of engineers are women, a figure which totally obliterates British stereotypes as to which sex is more likely to be mechanically inclined.

Likewise being a P.A. tends to be seen as more a woman's job. But to the Victorians it was unequivocally a man's role. The same for teaching.

The aptitudes we connect with men and women are a product of socialization and stereotypes rather than innate in any way.

All gender stereotypes are culturally inculcated rather than innate. We can see this - just as in the Russian statistic - because the stereotypes change across geography and history. For instance during the Stuart period high heels were male attire.

I'm guess you've not read the thread as not one person has suggested your son, who noone even knew about until you posted was "wrong" or that gender disphoria doesn't exist.