The Glinner thing

[JohnnyW2001]

Hello! Yes, I'm a dreaded new user, and I registered here just to reply to @glinner's post. I don't wish to gloat or insult. I just wanted to reply to one specific point:

"a dangerous ideology that tells children it's possible to be born into the wrong body"

Unfortunately it seems I cannot reply to that thread? So I'll write what I have to say here. Hopefully it will be taken in the spirit it's intended: Non confrontational sharing of science.

The problem with the sentence I quoted is that it's scientifically unsound. Female and male brains are biologically different in ways that have been observed and studied, again and again. There are certain physical traits that identify a female brain and a male brain.

What's especially interesting is that when you put people who claim to feel in the "wrong body" (as you put it) into brain imaging, they do indeed appear to have the wrong gendered brain for their body. There are observable unique characteristics that indicate a difference. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in studies for decades, and as our imaging technology has improved, it's only become more supported by science.

There are so many studies supporting this from the last 40 years, that it's difficult to pick one. Here's a few for you to Google (I can't seem to post links):

"Neuroimaging studies in people with gender incongruence", Kreukels, Baudewijntje, et al
"Grey and white matter volumes either in treatment-naïve or hormone-treated transgender women: a voxel-based morphometry study",
Giancarlo Spizzirri, et al

(Also, before anybody brings this up, I'm aware there are some scientists - namely Gina Rippon - who believe there is no biological brain gender, and that the entire brain is blank-slate shaped from birth. For those who are unaware, her argument is that society is what shapes female and male brains, due to the sheer elasticity of that organ, and that is why we see differences. One of the many problems with this argument is that the same gendered biological differences are also seen in animals. The exact same differences we see in humans. Society isn't playing role in rhesus monkeys.

Another is that there is measurable differences in male and female brains just 24 hours after birth.

To be brief: Scientists like Rippon, who claim there zero biological differences between male and female brains are, to put it mildly, are very much on the fringe and not the mainstream, despite the incredible amount of press they get.

Mainstream science says that when it comes to the gendered differences between our brains, biology plays a role and society plays a role -- not exactly controversial or difficult to believe.

Here's an article from Stanford Medicine which goes through the countless ways in which we have demonstrated biological gendered differences between brains over the decades, and how it cannot just be society as Rippon insists: "Two minds: The cognitive differences between men and women", Bruce Goldman at StanMed. Many of the falsehoods in Rippon's work are pointed out in Professor Simon Baron-Cohen's review of her book in The Times (March 2019), too.)

Just to be clear, I'm not making a political statement, I'm just sharing the science. And all mainstream science indicates that it is indeed biologically possible to have a female traited brain in a male traited body, and vise versa.

I will add one personal note: I have to say that this doesn't surprise me at all. Our genes are programmed to be occasionally random: Some people are born without a sense of smell, or missing limbs, or extra limbs, or whatever. So if there is such a thing as a female brain and a male brain then it makes perfect sense to me that occasionally someone would get a male brain in a female body, or vise versa.

And history has also repeatedly shown us that people who claim to be suffering from something that ultimately complicates their life in ways that anyone would rather avoid (like being gay, for example, which opens you up to persecution and complications and which historically was seen as a malady to be "cured") are usually right. These people really ARE suffering, and today we even have the science to prove that their complaint appears to be true.

Again, just to be clear, I'm not pushing any political agenda, or even suggesting the best way to address this situation, I'm just sharing the science, and hopefully appealing to your higher self. Pointing out that those who listen with compassion and empathy tend to sit on the right side of history.

Thanks.

Oh god, I blame it on too much Lego at an impressionable age.

My grandson (age 10) makes up Lego people by swapping heads and bodies etc.

OP is playing a game. Aww.

Saying that some men aren’t real men because they have the wrong sort of brain seems particularly regressive?

It's just such piss poor pseudo science

The facts are that if you got a neuroradiologist to look at 100 random CT or MRI scans they would not be able to sort them out correctly into male and female just from looking.

All the supposed studies have not generated enough reliable differences for the radiologist to be able to accurately sort because any differences are tiny and highly variable
In all cases if any such tiny differences do exist they are likely to be due to plasticity related to the different hormonal environment of a female body and the different social environment of being a woman.

What we do know is that from birth female babies are handled and spoken to differently than male babies. It starts from birth.

I am going to continue to go on 'has penis' and 'does not have penis' as my criteria for if someone is male or female.

It really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I think they feel, what they claim feel. What matters is that women get the right to keep our spaces. There are very good reasons for that. Let's suppose that there is science to suppoet that a man says or feels like a woman in his head. Ok. That's one thing, but since it is only a claim, and claims can be made by absolutely anyone, how on earth do you keep out predatory men from accessing spaces designed for women & girls?

The activists would argue that those trans women aren't safe using make changing rooms.....well ok.....but that's for MEN to sort out. It's THEIR problem. They need to bloody well stop harassing men who seem effeminate. It should not be up to women to open up our spaces and make them vulnerable to dangers & risks they were designed to keep out!!

@JohnnyW2001, I really think you're onto something here & that all the recent strife can be put to bed by using brain scans to identify those who are really trans. Miles better than just going with self declaration as anyone could do that & so doesn't seem very sensible to me.

Do you know if there's a petition running to lobby the government as part of the proposed GRA reform? If not, I might set one up myself.

Exciting!

The close to the argument about the "right side of history" brings to mind a recent Oliver Burkeman column:

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/21/the-wrong-side-of-history-has-become-a-crowded-place-time-to-rethink

The real hazard, though, comes when the idea is used by contemporary pontificators to avoid confronting the possibility that they, themselves, might be wrong. Once you’re confident of history’s position, you needn’t ask whether your critics might have a point; you can dismiss them as anachronistic fuddy-duddies who haven’t caught up with the latest advance toward moral truth. The irony is that it is a good idea to reflect on the judgment of history – not to reinforce your opinions, but rather to unsettle them, and infuse them with a dose of humility. The past is full of periods when people endorsed ridiculous or horrifying views, but they evidently didn’t think so at the time. Why should any of us be immune, just because our time happens to be now?

Another preposterous OP who produces a stinky pile of faeces and expects their mummy us to clean it up for them.

The most striking thing about these ploppers is their irredeemable sexism.

Ooh yes Robot

Why indeed have they not got up a petition to get all the trans folk special gender brain scans??

I agree someone needs to get onto that right away given that this lady brain condition is such an irrefutable scientific fact according to all mainstream scientists.

giphy.com/gifs/ge-brain-neuroscience-rgH58HC8tx3pu

I've discovered a clinic offering a solution to the wrong brain problem. Here's their website.

Our genes are programmed to be occasionally random: Some people are born without a sense of smell, or missing limbs, or extra limbs, or whatever

I thought people were born with missing limbs because of a birth defect or in some cases thalidomide? Are birth defects caused by genes that are programmed to be ocassionally random?

I confess, my poor little female brain couldn't last through that boring diatribe of bollocks. But I did last long enough to see yet another misrepresentation of Gina Rippon's position. She does not deny that there are biological differences between male and female brains. She posits that the effect of those differences has been massively overstated and that as we cannot divorce the male or female brain we observe from the societal influences its owner has experienced throughout life, we should not ever put functional differences or traits observed predominantly in one sex down to biological root causes alone.

That position is sound and has not been disproven by any science to date.

On a side note - and why my eyes glazed over trying to read the OP's ill-informed lecture - I read through the so-called evidence for ladybrainz last year, analysed the studies, read responses and critiques and as previous posters have already said, there is no evidence for the concept of a male or female brain as used in aid of transgender ideology. There is no evidence whatsoever that anyone is ever born into the wrong sexed body.

However, research into gender dysphoria in homosexual transsexuals who typically present with the condition at a young age has shown that it develops in reaction to any of a number of different traumas disrupting the development of the child's understanding of themselves. There is a hypothesis that there may be pre-natal biological factors that may predispose an individual child to react in this way, but nothing conclusive has been shown yet.

And that there may be a multifactorial cause of gender dysphoria does not matter at all for the actual conflict in play. Individuals who identify as trans exist. Why they do so may be relevant to a counsellor they visit, but it is immaterial to deciding whether a disadvantaged group should lose rights for the benefit of another group. Especially when the latter group is mostly made up of people who don't even have gender dysphoria.

So what is your point, OP?

Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up biscuits.

@HashtagLurky

Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up biscuits.

love an Airplane quote

don't call me Shirley

Yes! Although, I really have given them up this week, due to Lockdown Lardarse. This thread is torture, surely.

It is indeed an amusingly unscientific statement that 'our genes are programmed to occasionally be random' err no not really.

There are occasional random errors and these might cause a person to eg be born with a missing digit or extra digit due to an error in the genes controlling the pattern development of the limb. By definition these are errors and not programmed

However the idea that such an error can result in a whole organ 'being in the wrong body' makes absolutely no scientific sense and is in no way analogous at all to a missing digit or even limb. You'd have to imagine that there was some specific spot in the brain that causes it to be male or female to 'develop wrongly' but there is no such place.

In fact there are disorders of sexual development but affecting genitals not brains and these can cause the 'wrong' genitalia eg CAH can cause male appearance of genitalia in a chromosomal female but these do not in any way prove transgender ideology or a 'spectrum of gender' and people with DSDs have repeatedly said they don't want to get dragged into and used in this debate.

Would the hypothetical genderbrain scan resemble a mammogram in any way?

OP's earnest lecture on how science works does all rather fall down if you've actually read Gina Rippon. Or Cordelia Fine. Or any neuroscientist ever, including Simon Baron-Cohen.

One might contemplate whether the sheer arrogance of this post is a result of the poster's male biology or socialisation or a combination of the two...

So if there is such a thing as a female brain and a male brain then it makes perfect sense to me that occasionally someone would get a male brain in a female body, or vise versa.

Er, no, it wouldn't. Even if you accept the very dubious proposition that there are major differences between male and female brains, then the idea that sometimes a male brain appears in a female body or vice versa is completely batshit. The brain is part of the body, connected to the other parts. The idea that somehow a "male" brain is going to end up plonked in a female body is just bonkers.

Simple question. Why not take some well-known trans rights advocates, people like Jane Fae or Munroe Bergdorf or Jessica Yaniv and put their brains under an MRI scanner? And then we can see if a scientist can look at the scans and identify whether they're male or female. Job done.

And you had the opportunity to kindly educate me but instead you decided to patronise. And we both know that you know your doing it

One of the very first ways I began to break the insidious social conditioning I had received AS A FEMALE was that I realised I didn’t owe it to anyone to be ‘nice‘ My life got markedly better in so many ways. I’m free to be an utter cunt if that’s what I want. I have agency.

I generally try to act with integrity and compassion, but – im fucked if im going to spend MY time and energy ‘educating‘ someone who is quite evidently holding a device which they can use to ‘educate‘ Themselves.

In other news WE ARENT YOUR MUM

WokeUp

Thank you for that.

@Furx

And you had the opportunity to kindly educate me but instead you decided to patronise. And we both know that you know your doing it

One of the very first ways I began to break the insidious social conditioning I had received AS A FEMALE was that I realised I didn’t owe it to anyone to be ‘nice‘ My life got markedly better in so many ways. I’m free to be an utter cunt if that’s what I want. I have agency.

I generally try to act with integrity and compassion, but – im fucked if im going to spend MY time and energy ‘educating‘ someone who is quite evidently holding a device which they can use to ‘educate‘ Themselves.

In other news WE ARENT YOUR MUM

Completely relate to this. It’s very liberating.

In fact probably the only people who could comment about having a chromosomally male brain in a phenotypically female body are women with complete androgen insensitivity who have XY chromosomes but can't experience the effects of testosterone so have female genitalia and appearance.

Overwhelmingly they wish to be identified as female which suggests that lack of testosterone and social conditioning are more powerful than chromosomes and that having a 'male brain in a female body' does not actually cause you to want to be male.

There are not really any completely analogous reverse conditions.