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.

Well as the brain development is use dependant if the science from the article is based on examples like Jazz Jennings whose parents claimed he knew he was a girl as a toddler and said at age 2 that he wanted a vagina not a penis, then pressumsbley his parents would have encouraged him in typical feminine sex role stereotypes so his neural pathways would have linked up in the same ways girls are when femininity is pushed on them. Then add puberty blockers which prevent the male hormones influence on his brain. Then add synthetic female hormones which I guess have a fair chance of effecting the brain the same way natal women’s hormones do. And then you’d end up with a brain that would more closely resemble a woman’s than a man’s.

Can you check the data group the science refers to? I would guess it’s likely to come from this group, but that’s my assumption (if it’s a large enough group to get any meaningful data from). Now if it’s a group of 2000 Miranda Yardley’s I’m guessing you’d see a group of brains that more typically resemble male ones (albeit the fabulous versions of course) that show the same neural pathways that male hormones cause during puberty and beyond and the same neural pathways from being socialised as a man,taught to speak first, shout the loudest, be ambitious and competitive and so on. I’m guessing a study of later transitioning MITS would look very much like any study of males brains (prior to adding in females hormones) but a study of a much younger group who have been told yes you are a girl so like pink and skirts and make up and dolls and had much earlier effects of blocking male hormones and adding females would inevitably look a lot like female brains of the same age.

The only way to proove that trans people’s brains more closely resemble that of the other sex is to take a wide scale images of all new borns brains, have the expert say group a is all trans and the rest are ‘cis’, but keep that secret from the parents and 20/30 years later check if they were right.

Unlike sex, it really is a spectrum. absolutely.

I'm sure you've seen this.

the-art-of-autism.com/understanding-the-spectrum-a-comic-strip-explanation/

I can't for one minute pretend to be able to even hazard a guess as to what is happening.

I can appreciate though just how complex the body and brain are and the interplay between hormones and chemicals within. It does not seem to be a huge leap to think that there could well be a physical reason behind these feelings and that the expression of being born in the wrong body is an attempt to explain a feeling which has no label or explanation.

The rebuttle which resonated with me (and I believe it was said on these forums first by someone else) was...

If it is true that there is a male and female brain, AND that trans are born with the "right brain in the wrong body" then why don't they all get their brains tested and use the results as the criteria for "gender dysphoria"?

Trans know that there is no significant brain difference, they know they're just spouting garbage. There's been an entire field devoted to this topic, with many well-reputed studies proving that there is no significant difference between male and female brains.

www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5887179/There-absolutely-NO-difference-male-female-brains-neuroscientist-claims.html

www.newscientist.com/article/dn28582-scans-prove-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-male-or-female-brain/

Cordelia Fine wrote an entire easy-to-read book about it, citing MANY such studies and refuting all the trans propaganda. www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244?tag=mumsnetforum-21

Isn’t that more to do with how asc limits the person though rather than an expression of vulnerability to social conditioning though? Re doll playing I mean? As in give a boy with a similar presentation of asc stereotypical boys toys wouldn’t he be just as likely to line them up rather than play whatever boys game would be expected?

And yes it truely is a spectrum, or the neurodiverse prism illustration that’s out there often makes more senses imho.

The only way to proove that trans people’s brains more closely resemble that of the other sex is to take a wide scale images of all new borns brains, have the expert say group a is all trans and the rest are ‘cis’, but keep that secret from the parents and 20/30 years later check if they were right.

Yes.

Interestingly apparently women's brains change considerably during pregnancy- structurally. Iirc they 'morph back' over 2 years (dodgy memory on that last bit; I read it before I had my baby 5 mo ago!) I need to check that source but it's been given as a potential reason for some ppd and probably to do with coping with the nights/ tuned into small person 24/7.

I don't know if it's as simple as the main hormones prog and oestrogen though; it's a very complicated thing relying on many hormonal feedback systems.

Lang

That new Jane Clare Jones piece is superb. Thanks for posting it.

As in give a boy with a similar presentation of asc stereotypical boys toys wouldn’t he be just as likely to line them up rather than play whatever boys game would be expected?

Yes - I don't think I'm expressing myself properly! Content gendered, methods the same.

Need to sleep as sleep thief likely up v soon...

That’s a useful cartoon. I’ve emailed it to my work email address and I’ll show it my team leader tomorrow. I think she’s just starting to understand my condition after about a year.

"why don't they all get their brains tested and use their results to decide if they qualify for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria"

Is what I meant, hope that is clear. They don't, because they know the medical establishment does not agree that brain sex is a thing, and besides, trans also realize that none of them would qualify.

A second point. They keep saying that many of them pass as their target gender and how they've been using the women's spaces for years without anyone knowing. Well think about it. If THAT'S true then the only purpose for all these ridiculous legal protections is to allow people with a penis who clearly do not pass as women, to have easy access women and girls while we are naked.

Don't know about any of you, but the idea that some man can just stride in and shake his erect dick in my face while I'm showing at the community pool and without him getting in trouble for it is just... triggering a MASSIVE amount of PTSD.

Sorry for posting so much. This is all just insanity inducing.

ohello
More contradictory stuff from the TRAs, two good point there, thank you.
Brain sex is real but don't ask us to prove it, and trans women have been in women's spaces for years in stealth mode (don't ask us to prove that either) so let's bring in those who don't pass, except of course you have to pretend they do pass, otherwise it's literal violence. So we're not sure if anyone ever passed or if you were just being polite but it doesn't matter and we're taking over your spaces now anyway.

I have strong memories of my Mum always saying me and my brother were born the wrong way round. I should have been a boy and he should have been a girl. This was based on our personalities and what we liked to play with and do.

I struggled for many years about being a female. I hated everything about it.

My parents made a big fuss about my brother not having a male role model around (my dad worked away) but never thought his absence was an issue for me. They tried to get him into sports to 'toughen him up' and get him more into male things

I can't get away from thinking what messages my brother was constantly receiving. He was somehow 'wrong', but whilst I was also 'wrong' my parents didn't focus attention on my centring on why I was 'wrong'.

When my brother said he was my sister, my Mum accepted it without question. It must have fitted with her view for years, so why would she offer any other comment.

It wasn't much of a leap of faith for her. She already pretty much believed it.

My point is, I find it hard to move away from how religious belief and doctrine continues and the importance of it within families to your cultural and spiritual identity.

Add to that the internet where you can disassociate your self from your body and it becomes super charged. Your spiritual needs come from different types of social interaction.

My parents were early internet adopters and both me and my brother were early heavy users. My brother had a particular addiction with it, which lead at points to it affecting his real life responsibilities. He would sit up all night on it at times. He just wanted to constantly escape the reality around him and live in his own world.

It's almost as if he was a prisoner to escapism.

The internet was a church of modern utopia in that sense, where you could get spiritual advice and a sense of community, that was otherwise lacking in his life.

If you want to see it in a religious sense then how the internet has come at a time of a loss of spirituality and faith in parts of society has to come into it. Human needs include this desire to belong somehow, and be connected to a tribal identity. I suspect it an instinctive thing relating to how your best chance of survival is in a group.

There are many things which make me think about commonality with religion and religious preaching and doctrine relating to trans. Including hostility to reason, logic and science in general. If you do science it undermines important parts of doctrine.

None of this means you change sex. It highlights very human instincts and needs which stem from that. And the role within society we are told we are supposed to fill.

It's really useful aspie, glad you've used it, really helps anyone understand asd better.

Of course it's been pinched and used by the TRAs but ends as an own goal as just proves we are all non binary trans - it's called personality.

Sorry to read that red.

But yes, the impact of visual media on our perception of self is enormous and not been factored into all this.

ive just read an article about teenager Jazz Jennings. Firstly I apologise if my view is too simplistic but I’m still fairly new to these discussions but I feel that this young person is still too young (age 18) to have made such big desicions such as undergoing gender reassignment surgery. In the article Jazz says that at the age of two they were asking their parents when the magic fairy would come and take his male organ away.
What if Jazz changes their mind now? It’s just further surgery and trauma to deal with.

It's worth remembering about brain scans that they show only a very, very limited picture of what is going on in the brain. And our interpretation even of those scans is still extremely crude. The brain is an incredibly sophisticated organ (well, think about all the amazing things it does), and as I said earlier we have only scratched the surface of beginning to understand it. This doesn't just apply to (hypothetical) sex differences, it applies to just about everything brain-related. So while it would be nice to be able to say that it's been proved that sex differences don't exist, all scientists can really argue is that no (convincing) evidence for sex differences has yet been found. It's an important distinction, because that's how science works.

RedToothBrush

Yes, absolutely. And like most religions, it gives members an ideal platform for righteous anger toward non-believers, who they can see as wicked and vicious, which is such a satisfying, validating feeling for most of us.

"why don't they all get their brains tested and use their results to decide if they qualify for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria"

And then you would still have to explain the practical purpose of dividing people along gender lines, and where all the other people under the trans umbrella fit in.

daughter I think most people posting here agree that Jazz was too young. I don't know what would happen if Jazz changed their mind - whether stopping estrogen and supplying testosterone would do anything or not. ...

Ekphrasis I recently found this news article about one of the long-term effects of pregnancy on mothers - although the micro-chimeric cells are not restricted to the brain, it seems none of us are 100% only made up of the exact combination of XX or XY chromosomes that our two parents gave us:

www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/children’s-cells-live-mothers

I'm a fraternal twin and have often wondered if my rather non-conformance to femininity might have, in some way, been because of my twin brother in the womb. But my mother wasn't very conforming either, so that probably influenced me, too.

And yet, TRAs, having individual cells from other family members in your body or brain still does not mean it's possible to change sex!

Update on poor Jazz:

Jennings' use of puberty blockers meant doctors had to be innovative.
"Being on the blockers is something that I don't regret at all," she said. "But the only, you know, downside to it was that I didn't have enough growth down below.
"So there wasn't enough tissue to work with when it came to the surgery," she continued. "And it was very challenging to find a doctor, a surgeon who was willing to perform the operation on me just 'cause I'm such a difficult case."
"They’re using the tissue I have, the peritoneum, and also, they may take a skin graft as well," she explained. "I say it's going to be like a patchwork vagina, Franken-vagina. So yeah, as long as it's functional, that's all that matters."
Following her surgery, which reportedly took three surgeons nearly five hours, Jennings' recovery proved to be a bit challenging.
"There was just an unfortunate event and setback where things did come apart, and there was a complication," she said. "I had to come back in for another procedure, but it was just all part of the journey. The good thing though is that it was only cosmetic and external so it wasn’t too dramatic."

Oh goodness, poor kid.

It's the epitome of going down a route from which there's just no way back.

(What does that even mean , a 'functional vagina'? No, don't answer that. )

Need to catch up on thread but quite by chance this came up on my fb feed regarding differences between brains but also with autism and the neuroscientist has said what I have birthed and was clumsily trying to say; the more 'severe' the asd the more equal the ratio between the sexes and that they believe gender conditioning is contributing to bigger ratio differences between the sexes among 'more able' children with asd.

(I appreciate those children with higher functioning autism are as severely affected by their autism; this is more to do with the level of receptive and expressive communication and cognitive ability from academic perspectives)

parentingsciencegang.org.uk/web-chats/how-different-are-womens-and-mens-brains/

So this researcher is very much of the opinion that environmental stereotyping directly affects the brain.

what I have birthed

No idea what I was trying to say there! Experienced? Observed?

On the most basic of levels, it must affect the brain. Otherwise, we'd never learn our own language and lose the ability to be fluent in others.

I still don't feel fully fluent in 'people', and I can see that DS is worse and that DD has to work hard at it to 'pass'.

(One is autistic, the other probably wouldn't get the diagnosis, but, well, that's girls and masking for you. Neither is trans, but I can see some temptation to believe that that is the reason one doesn't fit in.)