The science of transgender / gender identity

[LayOfTheLand]

I'm feeling a little wary stepping in here, but I wanted to ask a question about transgender and science. I've been following many posts here, and although I don't spend too much of my time thinking about transgender issues, I'm in the camp where I broadly think the world is going a bit mad about transgender. It's not something I can really understand and get my head around, and I'm very opposed to the idea of self-identification. If I'm honest, I struggle with the idea of men who feel that they are trapped in the wrong body, and vice versa, because I broadly see a world where it's fine for a man to have "feminine" traits, and vice versa.

However, in challenging my views, I was looking for some summary of the scientific evidence for gender identity and I came across a few links, and there does seem evidence that there is something genuine for a small proportion of people who have characteristics of "female" brains, and so on.

e.g. sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/gender-lines-science-transgender-identity/

Has anyone got a good summary of what the scientific evidence is on gender identity, and does it influence your views on the current discussions. Thanks a lot, and please be gentle!

LayOfTheLand

Unfortunately it's hard to tell the difference between genuine questioning and TRA sea lioning.

It does, usually, become clear during the course of a thread. But, we have had several sea lions on here who have lasted, quite literally, months and months.

A sea lion is someone who appears to ask innocent questions in order to get people to do a whole bunch of work, distracting them, and making them repeat themselves. Then acting all innocent over issues with oh really, I didn't really get that, ahh right, no, I sort of get it, can you explain more?

There is little difference between them and a genuine questioner. Fortunately, I have a lot of patience, and am also, always, speaking to more than just one person.

Haven't rtwt but in case nobody has linked to it yet, this is a brilliant, simply worded explanation of sex and gender:
sexandgenderintro.com/

This is an excellent and very informative thread.

You don't need books or references. Traits supposed to be female, in a brain inside a male body? Thus the traits aren't female. And vice versa. Thus traits are shared. Trans people themselves disprove male-female brain theories. That's all you need.

The book at this link makes interesting reading.

I know that the theories advanced by Lawrence, Blanchard and Bailey are seen as controversial by trans activists, and they may or may not be right, but they at least represent a scientific approach to the issue. Most current discussion seems dominated by ideology rather than science.

Bbc news story on difference betteeen men and women's navigation skills:

"So countries where there is high equality between men and women, the difference between men and women is very small on our spatial navigation test.
"But when there's high inequality the difference between men and women is much bigger. And that suggests the culture people are living in has an effect on their cognitive abilities."

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-45134809

I believe there are some slight differences in young children but it's by no means black and white or fixed. Generally, there are many more boys in Sen schools, with sp and Lang difficulties, attention difficulties, needing OT support with fine motor skills. Some of this could be put down socialisation and there also can be a really bad attitude in the early years that "oh that's what boys are like" so early intervention is perhaps missed for boys, whereas it might be given earlier to a girl, but not all of it can be attributed to this. And of course there's always many exceptions to rules.

I don't have links sadly, just what I've observed and what OTs and sp and Lang specialists have told me.

But none of these additional needs are in anyway linked to sex roles.

I think I can attribute some the differences in diagnosis and presentation of girls with Autism to gender stereotypes - among less severely affected children with asd.

However, the numbers of boys who are more severely affected by autism (ie quite significant learning difficulties as well, very limited communication skills) are higher than girls.

i've never found arguments based on neurological make-up very convinncing, tbh; and even less so after reading rebacca jordan-young's brain storm. there just doesn't seem any need to code into the brain what the body already does.

personally i think the best way to look at this issue (at least until we reach an adequate level of scientific understanding) is through philosophy of mind, particularly stuff around embodied and extended cognition.

Autistic brains have been shown to have genetic differences from non autistic brains. The whole story is yet to be clarified. It is being investgated as a sex-linked disorder. Like many disorders, multiple genes as well as environmental considerations are likely, but at least one of these may be a sex linked issue.

Sex linked genes are located on sex chromosomes so they are inherited and expressed in slightly different ways depending on sex. This does not in any way mean male and female brains are different, just that the inheritance of certain features becomes more or less likely depending on sex.

Therefore the observation that more boys than girls have autism need not be due to either girl/boy brain or due to socialisation, it is simply (or partly) due to inheritance patterns of sex chromosomes. None of the women on here have ever disputed that men have different sex chromosome pairs to women!

Yes I omitted to say all due to genetic effects on the way the brain develops, thanks for explaining very eloquently!

The sex linked disorders probably extends to and explains the higher incidence of sp and Lang and motor skill difficulties among boys.