You can't be 'born in the wrong body'

[Charliethefeminist]

A lot of people watching Butterfly still think it's possible to be 'born in the wrong body'. I wanted to start a thread to explain why it is impossible.

Being 'born in the wrong body' would have to mean there were such things as 'male' and 'female' brains and that it's possible for these to be in an opposite sex body.

Take 'male'. There would have to be a certain thing about the brain that would make it specifically 'male' and that female people don't ever have. Call it Trait M.

Firstly, no such trait M has ever been discovered. No such trait M has ever been described. No such trait M can ever be defined or named, even by the most ardent and medically qualified transadvocates. No such trait M can be found on a brain scan.

This is because male and female people (when male and female are used in the biological sense) can and do share every and any brain trait. There are no brain traits that are unique and exclusive to either sex. That means the 'male' brain and thd 'female' brain don't exist.

The reason we use the words male and female in the first place is to describe biological sex. There is no point to the words otherwise, and if they are taken away from reproductive role, there's no word to describe people with the same reproductive role.

It's clear that male people share personality and style traits right across the spectrum from David Sylvia to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Females share personality and style traits across the spectrum from Ariane Grande to Lea DeLaria.

Transgender people themselves prove that there is no such thing as a male brain in a female body and vice versa. There can be a male brain with personality and style traits across a vast spectrum, but the brain remains male.

Naturally then, society needs to accept once more that men can wear sparkles, pink, high heels and make up, they don't have to say they're a woman to do it. We used to, and we should do again. Especially when it comes to kids.

OK that's it.

But that's a circular logic to say that if an aberration appears then it can't be an aberration because it has appeared?

what if the neurological function is found to relate to a female process? e.g. say it relates to hormone function in the female body.

The dream would be that someone can find out what is incorrectly switched on or off in the brains of dysphoric people and create a helpful medication that switches it off.

It's not circular to say that if a neurological function is found in both sexes then it is a shared neurological function and not male or female. It's obvious, but it's not circular. Whatever the function relates to, it's not uniquely male or female therefore not an identifier for a male or female brain.

The circular logic was about your previous post - we cross posted.

so what is they find a neurological function Y that is only in women and men with gender dysphoria?

I think we did! It would still be a shared neurological function, so not a signifier of a female brain.

So if something is in every single women's "brain" and only in the "brain" of men who say that they feel like women you don't think that would be a signifier that there are some neurological functions that are associated with the external female biology? And something has gone wrong with dysphoric men in terms of how they relate to their physical form (be that characterised as born with the wrong brain or born in the wrong body?)

That was my point about saying if an aberration is found it can't be aberration because it has been found.

How would it be exclusively female if it is also in men's brains?

There is something in some men's brains and some women's brains that makes them feel dysphoria, but it is not an opposite sex brain.

Incidentally, Tavistock does not differentiate diagnostically between people who have severe sex dysphoria (people who feel that their bodies are wrong) and people with gender dysphoria (people who ferl severe discomfort with the gender role ascribed to their sex by society).

There are certainly interesting discussions to be had about the relationship between mind and body.

But at the end of the day, major, major detrimental changes to women's protections are being shunted into law. On the basis of the notion that it is possible to be 'born in the wrong body'.

Because these changes are so major, I want to see peer-reviewed evidence that being born in the wrong body is an actual thing. Overwhelming evidence, in fact, because the evidence for potential harm to women is clear.

its a mental illness

I don't think genuine sex (as opposed to gender) dysphoria is a mental illness in the way that we might traditionally think about mental illnesses, I agree with countess about it being faulty wiring. It's like having chronic pain that lasts once the original cause of the pain has gone, you can't think it away, but there are things you can do to change your wiring. There was some stuff in a book by Dr Norman Doidge about how people rewired their brains after injury or illness that made me think about this. It makes me wonder how much it's about people feeling that their male/female body is wrong and so just jumping to the conclusion that this means that they are the other sex, and how much of it is is actually feeling more positively that they are actually the other sex (if that makes sense!)

I completely agree that modifying your body should be the last resort.

Dragon3

I want to see peer-reviewed evidence that being born in the wrong body is an actual thing. Overwhelming evidence, in fact, because the evidence for potential harm to women is clear.

But for me the point is that this so what if it is a thing - i.e. I think that this is the wrong thing to focus on (although I note the point someone made above about how the language can be harmful for autistic children etc)

Even if we find out that there is a neurological basis for dysphoria (which I think likely there is) the whole point is that women's sex based protections are based on the fact that men have dicks and are stronger (and womens reproductive systems means they need stuff).

It's got nought to do with internal identity and all to do with physical bodily attributes. I think if the debate can somehow focus on that then a lot of the emotion comes out of.

And then it becomes screamingly obvious that your not being "transphobic" you are just treating that person who has male physical attributes like any other person who has those attributes.

I was going to chime in that I was born in the wrong body because I have an autoimmune disease. I see someone else has mentioned the same.

At least once a day the discomfort gets so bad that I have to focus my breathing and remind myself that my body is just the imperfect vessel for my awesome brain. I may be trapped in here, but being me makes it worth it. I have no choice but to accept my body as it is.

I was born in the wrong body because mentally I am a long-legged, lithe gorgeous 20 year-old supermodel.

In reality, I am a short-legged, average looking middle aged woman.

FFSFFSFFS, but that's the point though, isn't it? I think that we are in agreement here.

The problem is that some TRAs are claiming that male-bodied people are actually, literally, female by dint of whatever is going on in their heads.

We are not allowed to say that their male bodies are male. Or that typical male anatomy presents a danger to women. Certainly not in cases where male-bodied people claim to be literally female.

It's not the wrong thing to focus on. It's the right thing to focus on right now, because lots of people think it's true and laws will be changed and have been changed because people believe it to be possible. It needs to be widely known and absolute clear that it is not true and not possible. Then we move forward on how to help the people who feel this way.

*presents a potential danger to women

It's true Charlie. The 'born the wrong body' thing started as shorthand to explain how dysphoric people feel. At some point the narrative changed from 'transgender people feel like they were born in the wrong body' to 'this is what literally happened'.

It seems to me that part of the brain functions as a psychokinetic "map" of the body and causes us to "recognise" our body as our own. I do wonder if it's possible for the map in your brain to say that, e.g., female genitalia should be there and for the sight of male instead, or vice versa, to cause huge distress.

The Penfield homonculus:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus

It’s like a map of the body spread across the cortex.

Stimulate one are and you feel it in the appropriate body part or vis-versa. More sensitive areas take up more space.

Also, the region associated with the genitals is close to the region associated with the feet: this may explain foot fetishes.

Being born in the wrong body was meant as a metaphor - like being born in the wrong century.

There are people with Victorian attitudes who might well have been more comfortable in the 19th Century.

They are not, in reality, some kind of reverse Sam Beckett who has Quantum Leaped forward into a 21st Century body.

Yes, yes, dragon and aspie, it's a metaphor but is now taken to be literal. Thanks.

Science and medicine aren't bothered about souls or consciousness or defining reality. It looks to help people who are suffering and distressed, and it accepts that people's conscious experience is their reality.

That’s not how science operates. They didn’t spend billions on the Large Hardon Collider to help the suffering and distressed. They did it because humans are curious.

The LHC cost the same as a block of chocolate of equal mass. They could have relieved more suffering by buying us all chocolates. I’d still prefer to know about the Higgs mechanism.

Ironically it is we aspies who are supposed to have the problems with metaphor. And irony. A lot of trans-ideology seems to boil down to problems understanding figurative language, hence ‘literal violence’ and ‘transwomen are women’.

it accepts that people's conscious experience is their reality

This a load of bunkum. Firstly, science doesn't do that. And secondly, it's evidence of the absolute butchering of post-structuralism by this useless movement.

As Jane Clare Jones - to my mind the best commentator and analyst of all this currently writing - points out, rights and identities are relations, not absolute realities subjective or otherwise.

janeclarejones.com/2018/10/12/identity-sovereignty-and-narcissism/

May I recommend that people listen to Prof Gina Rippon, world-renowned neuroscientist on the subject of brain [born in the wrong body is a myth!]:

There are male and female brains. There are brains that have xy chromosomes, and brains that have xx ones. There are other differences, size for example, and there are differences more commonly seen in female brains and others more commonly seen in male. Brain development is use dependant so of course our bodies hormones develope brains one way or the other. There are also other common patterns in life, how differently women are socialised from men, that leads to brains developing one way or the other. Telling girls they are good at caring and they practice that so their neural pathways develope that way, tell boys they are allowed to be rough and boysterious and their neural pathways develop that way.

At birth the functionality of male and female brains are the same, that’s what matters, and that’s what Dr Lise Elliot has proven time and time again.

Aspie my kids who have asc flip out if a boy is in the girls toilets. No explanation of how little toddlers are allowed in with their mothers will work, they just scream very loudly that boys are not allowed in the girls. I’m secretly pleaded & I think often they understand the world better than the so called normals.

Thank you marshmallow - I agree, there is such a thing as a male brain and it is full of y chromosomes.