Gender is not a social construct

[SheWhoMustNotBeHeard]

A very insightful interview with Debra Soh, the Canadian scientist on Triggernometry. She talks about the research in differences in male and female brains, trans people's brains being more female if they are tw and more male if tm but that results are confounded by their sexuality. She talks about transitioning children and why the affirmative approach is harmful.

She also disagrees that gender is a social construct. I didn't really understand what she was saying tbh. She didn't say what is was either. Can someone clarify it for me?

I haven't seen it all but she's now talking about pornography

How can a brain be more female or male if they can't actually say what makes a brain male or female?

Do their genes somehow change?

I haven't watched this one but she was on Joe Rogan recently and she talked a little bit about this. Something along the lines she didn't feel very feminine she feels more masculine and when asked about that she said something about being exposed to higher testosterone levels in utero. She lost me a bit on that point as I thought that's what has been argued to explain transgenderism. It's on my list to read up on-if there is any studies to support this.

Will have to watch later, but as I understand it there are two schools of thought on differences in cognitive behaviour between men and women.

1 - what you might call the "nurture theory". Emphasises that differences in cognitive performance have tiny d values - i.e. the difference between the mean performance for women and that for men is tiny compared with the variability within each population. Points out that the brain is immensely plastic and responds to external stimuli, and that we live in such a sexist society that right from infancy girls and boys are treated differently ie exposed to different stimuli. So there's no way you could construct an experiment which would tell you whether cognitive differences (tiny and overlapping) can be mapped onto neurological differences (again, tiny and overlapping), and whether such differences were "hard-wired" according to sex or developed contingently as a result of brains being exposed to different stimuli in a sexist society. This is Cordelia Fine and Lise Elliott's position.

2 - the nature argument: the small but measurable differences in cognitive performance can be mapped onto small but measurable differences in underlying neurological structures, which in turn are at least in part driven by chromosomal sex differences, not just brain plasticity responding to differing stimuli. I think this is Deborah Soh's position (and Simon Baron Cohen and Steven Pinker).

I'll be interested to watch to see how Soh deals with the claim that, given what we know about brain plasticity, and also how early in life parents and carers start differentiating how they treat girls and boys, how one could create a clean experiment to separate out nature and nurture.

She was on point on children transitioning.

I didn't agree with her views on sexism where she more or less said it's some men are sexist not the society. She talked about STEM not being sexist.

She talked about sexual relationships between men and women and how we are hard wired to think about sex. She said some women try to keep up with men in terms of casual sex but making those women miserable and they should be more comfortable about their own needs.

When asked about women's spaces, she was quite firm on her views about prisons and her arguments were solid. Her views on toilets etc were yes, women and girls need to be listened to but let's open it up for discussion.

Finally, she said that the vocal majority should stand up, find out information and speak up.

@DianasLasso

Will have to watch later, but as I understand it there are two schools of thought on differences in cognitive behaviour between men and women.

1 - what you might call the "nurture theory". Emphasises that differences in cognitive performance have tiny d values - i.e. the difference between the mean performance for women and that for men is tiny compared with the variability within each population. Points out that the brain is immensely plastic and responds to external stimuli, and that we live in such a sexist society that right from infancy girls and boys are treated differently ie exposed to different stimuli. So there's no way you could construct an experiment which would tell you whether cognitive differences (tiny and overlapping) can be mapped onto neurological differences (again, tiny and overlapping), and whether such differences were "hard-wired" according to sex or developed contingently as a result of brains being exposed to different stimuli in a sexist society. This is Cordelia Fine and Lise Elliott's position.

2 - the nature argument: the small but measurable differences in cognitive performance can be mapped onto small but measurable differences in underlying neurological structures, which in turn are at least in part driven by chromosomal sex differences, not just brain plasticity responding to differing stimuli. I think this is Deborah Soh's position (and Simon Baron Cohen and Steven Pinker).

I'll be interested to watch to see how Soh deals with the claim that, given what we know about brain plasticity, and also how early in life parents and carers start differentiating how they treat girls and boys, how one could create a clean experiment to separate out nature and nurture.

I'll check out some of the people quoted, thank you. I think based on my anecdotal experience I would question whether it is predominantly nurture but with a little bit of nature too.

She talks about the research in differences in male and female brains, trans people's brains being more female if they are tw and more male if tm but that results are confounded by their sexuality.

I think its neither here nor there unless somebody is going to develop a test to find out whether people have male or female brains, and treat them differently because of their brains.

Even if her theory explains why some people are trans (and many people disagree that there are male and female brains), it doesn't negate the fact that women need specific services and protections because of their female sex bodies.

She talks about the research in differences in male and female brains, trans people's brains being more female if they are tw and more male if tm but that results are confounded by their sexuality.

I have only seen one study brought up for this. It said transwomen had brains than were more similar (but not the same as) women’s and transmen had brains that were more similar (but not the same as) men’s. Sexuality was a confounder but there was a much bigger one; the transgender individuals had been taking triptorelin since onset of puberty. When they looked at transgender children (ie before they started taking a drug that has been shown previously to have an affect on the brain) there was no difference between transgender children and other children of their own sex.

I’ve just purchased her book...I’m interested in what she has to say but anticipate I will be stressed out by it

That's the conservative thesis.

I find Soh (And her Ilk like Colin Wright who believe in the Beren-Cohen school of thought re:gender) frustrating Because although i agree with them that biology matters, I have no level of confidence In their assertions that they can tease apart nurture and nature so easily. The problem is truly an intractable one in humans, Because we begin socializing at birth and our brains literally change due to socialization, and honest Neuroscientists admit this.

To me Sohs argument supports The TRA PoV. She believes that she - along with Trans Men, NBs etc - is not like other girls and therefore can do the manly stuff like science and math unlike us lesser womenfolk. I would agree with her If she said that science itself is not sexist. But thAt there is no sexism in The scientific community? Nonsense. There are plenty of studies showing sexism is alive and well especially in those fields with fewer women. And no wonder if the only women in them are like Soh and willing to throw 95% of women under the bus because she’s “cognitively special.” Give me a break.

The other thing, when it comes to the relevance of this to the question of whether TWAW is what you do with overlapping distributions.

Even if we found cognitive differences with largish, statistically significant d-values, and mapped those onto brain structures with similarly largish d-values, and found some way of establishing what proportion of the difference was down to nature and what was down to nurture ("percentage of variance explained"), it still wouldn't establish such a thing as "male brains" and "female brains", just that "on average, brains look slightly different in men as compared to women."

Take height as an analogy. This is one of the more obvious, and clearly and unambiguously measurable differences between the male and female populations. It has quite a big d value (about 1.5 or 2 IIRC; for cognitive differences d is typically less than 1).

Very few men are my height (I'm 5'3"). That doesn't make 5'3" a "female height". We wouldn't assert that a man of 5'3" was partly feminine on the basis of having a height of 5'3".

The same applies to neurological/cognitive differences. I'm an outlier (wrt to both male and female populations) in terms of mathematical ability - I'm good at maths (not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination, but comfortably at the upper end of the distribution.) Suppose Baron-Cohen is right and "systematising" and mathematical abilities are more common in males than females. Would that make my brain a "male brain" or "more masculine brain" because I'm good at maths, and more men than women (hypothetically) are good at maths? Of course not, any more than the short man is "partly feminine".

A lot of this muddle comes from people not understanding means, variances and overlaps between populations.

There is a range of ability and latent potential and expression within each sex ( which is normally referred to as gender). It doesn't change the underlying reality of sex, though.

Circular thinking fail on her part.

Bodies are sexed, yes.
What makes any characteristic male or female?
The fact that it ONLY relates to ONE SEX.
Penises. Ovaries. They can be reliably described as male or female.

When is a characteristic NOT reliably described as male or female? When it occurs in BOTH SEXES. Even if it skews towards being more prevalent in one sex. It still cannot be described as male or female.

Exclusive to one sex? Label it male or female.
Present in both sexes? Don't.

Substitute 'gender' for height, or for colour blindness, or for weight.

A person who is 5'8" has a male height.
A person who is colourblind has a male condition.
A person who is 15 stones has a male weight.
A person with hypothyroidism has a female disease.
A person who recovers from Covid-19 has a female immune system.

It sounds stupid, obviously, because it is. These characteristics and conditions are found in both sexes.
Yes, they SKEW towards one sex.
But, noting that they are more prevalent in one sex or the other doesn't render them male or female.

The exact same principle applies to 'brain gender'.
Unless you are Deborah Soh, et al.

In which case you look at a trait, like, ability to parallel park, or load a dishwasher. And you determine that this ability, despite being easily observable in BOTH sexes, skews towards one sex more than the other and suddenly you gender-render it.
It's a logic fail, a false labelling.

Soh wouldn't take any other trait, like height, weight, or disease propensity and conclude - this skews 60:40, or 80:20, or 95:5 towards one sex so now it's literally labelled MALE or FEMALE because of a skew.
5'7" is a male height, so you, lady, have a male height.
Hypothyroidism is a female disease. You have a female disease, Mr Smith.

But she WILL do that with ability to play chess, or choose nursing, or any other skewed personality or brain aptitude.

It's simply an unacknowledged bias she has.

If it is exclusive to a sex, it can be labelled male or female.
If it is present in both sexes, even if it is more prevalent in one, it cannot.

(And none of that even begins to address her demonstrably false conclusion that "I observe a skewed trait - it must be innate".
"I see it, therefore I know what caused it" does not follow logically)

If Soh is right, what she might call a 'female' brain would be just an atypical male brain. It's still a male brain in a male person's male body. It doesn't mean that some people are born in the wrong body.

I suppose male and female brains are relevant if you are asking whether women are less likely to do study STEM subjects because of nature or nurture.

However, I think its difficult to answer questions like that when women have only been able to study anything at university on equal terms with men in the last 50 years or so.

Diana and Barracker both nailed it.

@merrymouse

I suppose male and female brains are relevant if you are asking whether women are less likely to do study STEM subjects because of nature or nurture.

However, I think its difficult to answer questions like that when women have only been able to study anything at university on equal terms with men in the last 50 years or so.

Again, that's an example of confusing variance within a population with the two populations being completely distinct. Suppose for the sake of argument Baron-Cohen and Soh are right, and the difference in the number of male maths undergrads and female maths undergrads (or physics, or engineering) is down to nature, not nurture - there are just, naturally, more men than women who are good at those subjects.

That still doesn't mean that a woman like me who is good at maths has a "male brain". It just means I have a set of cognitive abilities which are (relatively speaking) rarer in women than in men.

Nor does it mean we should adjust education policies (as was the case back in the 1950s) and push girls towards "home-making subjects, arts subjects if they're bright enough, but perish the thought they should do engineering."

Mathematics is a gendered subject: there is an expectation that boys will do well at it and boys will like ‘that sort of thing’. But that hasn’t always been that case, as with things like studying the Classics, it has also been a ‘woman’s subject’. The difference is things are only a ‘women’s subject‘ when they are not considered important by men.

I too am good at maths, as are my daughters, my brother, my father, my sisters. If you include my siblings and in-laws then equal numbers of males and females studied maths at university. For the rest, only men studied non-science subjects. The next generation of both sexes look likely to study STEM too.

@merrymouse

I suppose male and female brains are relevant if you are asking whether women are less likely to do study STEM subjects because of nature or nurture.

However, I think its difficult to answer questions like that when women have only been able to study anything at university on equal terms with men in the last 50 years or so.

One thing which would strongly indicate a ‘nurture’ element is the fact that a larger proportion of girls in single sex schools study STEM.

Diana I agree with what you are saying.

The point is that if you believe that a trait (in this case being good at maths) is more common in boys that girls, you don't worry if e.g. fewer girls than boys are studying maths at university.

Read Gina rippons the gendered brain, a brilliant take-down of "the female brain"

@merrymouse

Diana I agree with what you are saying.

The point is that if you believe that a trait (in this case being good at maths) is more common in boys that girls, you don't worry if e.g. fewer girls than boys are studying maths at university.

That's why it's so important to evaluate every step in the process, including the "have you established the nature vs. nurture claim you're making, how did you do it, how defensible is the methodology"?

And it's also why it's important to stress that even if Soh is right and boys are just more likely than girls to be good at STEM subjects (questions about plasticity, evidence from single sex schools, cross cultural comparisons suggests this is certainly not the only factor - nurture undoubtedly plays a big role), that's not a reason (as used to be done) to exclude all girls from STEM, or discourage the ones that are good at it still further. (I'm old enough to remember going through the school system in an era when the careers teacher thought I was mad for wanting to do a STEM subject).

I’ve got a female brain because it’s in a female body.
The fact that I have a Maths degree, ordinarily wear very little makeup, enjoy competitive sport and for some years did a typically male job is irrelevant.